What would it cost to stop next 3407?

CLARENCE CENTER, N.Y. (WIVB) - The Flight 3407 report is out and now experts are looking into what life-saving lessons must be learned.

The NTSB report pinpointed pilot error as the cause of the tragedy in Clarence Center. The panel says Captain Marvin Renslow failed to follow proper procedures. His employer, Colgan Air, claims he was properly trained.

Pilot training has come under intense scrutiny since the crash. Now there is a new initiative to give pilots hands-on training.

Now that pilot error and, to some extent, questions of proper training have been declared the probable cause of the crash of Flight 3407, the next question is what can be done to prevent another such crash from happening again.

Calspan Test Pilot Brian Ernisse said, "This frankly was just a stall they entered. They didn't understand their airplane very well and they also didn't have any idea of how to recover from what they were in."

Ernisse simulated the problem in this demonstration for News 4 months ago and showed how the plane could have easily been controlled, had Capt Marvin Renslow and Co-pilot Rebecca Shaw followed the right procedures, but this kind of training in flight is not what most pilots receive.

"It's expensive. In the airline industry virtually all training is done in ground based simulators," said Ernisse.

But both the airline industry and the FAA began considering the value of hands-on in flight training for the handling of upsets as far back as 1994, when U.S. Air Flight 427 had a rudder failure and crashed because the pilots weren't trained to handle it. For 16 years they've been thinking about it, but have not acted. So how much would it cost the public to make sure pilots have real life training experience handling problems?

Ernisse said, "On the order of 50 cents a ticket we can run every captain through in a matter of years through training like this in a real airplane that provides this kind of training. And not just this company. There's several companies that provide this kind of thing so these pilots have some hands-on."

Right now we pay an extra four to five dollars a ticket to beef up security at airports. Another 50 cents would go toward training regional airline pilots who are first entering into the airline industry. Calspan believes it will take public pressure to make it happen if the public is willing to pay a little extra for safety.