Going to say something that may sound unkind. But I think the root cause of this crash will undoubtedly come down to human factors in the cockpit. This was a challenging landing. With some tricky crosswinds. Finally today we got some info on the pilots. The Captain or PiC is a 50 something pilot with a good amount of hours. But it looks like his primary job is as a Simulator Instructor. And he only grabbed this flight to maintain his rating and credentials. he spends most of his time piloting a desk. And not a lot of wind beneath his wings as it were. Add to that he appears to have started at Endeavor, worked his way up into flying larger aircraft for mainline Delta. And at some point had an issue where he got bumped back down to Endeavor and CRJ's? So questions there? Failed check rides? Bad evaluation somewhere? He's possibly putting in his hours somewhere harmless until retirement. The Co-Pilot was a just barely 23 year old girl. Barely starting her career. With maybe 1250 flight hours total and was working on a brand new "Restricted ATP" rating. She looks to have had a great education from U SoDak. So she could get the Restricted rating at 21 and below 1500 hours. She's been working as a GA flight instructor to build hours. She is very very green. Maybe 47 hours on the CRJ I think I saw. Judging by Radio coms the Captain was Pilot Monitoring, she was Pilot Flying. Neither of them would be a problem on their own. Everybody has to start somewhere. And The late career sim instructors still need to get their flight hours. But the two of them together strikes me as potentially a bad combination in those weather conditions. Given the crosswind gusts the Senior Pilot almost certainly should have been the one flying. But there may have been some weird confidence or skill dynamics in that cockpit. None of that takes away from the absolutely heroic medal worthy actions of the Flight Attendants who did the impossible and got everybody out of that plane alive. With remarkably few injuries.
The young lady pilot didn't have enough experience for this type of weather.
Pilot was 26 yr old Kendal Swanson who had just received her provisional certification 41 days prior to the crash. The majority of her 1500 total flight hours were in a small single-engine prop plane. No way was she capable of this operation in these conditions - obviously.
DEI will get you killed.
I am so angry that this young girl with no experience was entrusted with the lives of 80 people. She probably was hired over much more experienced applicants. This BS has to stop! DEI is dangerous..
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