May 14 (Bloomberg) -- Pinnacle Airlines Corp. pilots “went from complacency to catastrophe” in the February crash near Buffalo, New York, that killed 50 people, and didn’t recognize the danger, a U.S. safety board member said.

National Transportation Safety Board member Debbie Hersman said during a hearing of the board today in Washington that the pilots performed tasks such as extending the landing gear without realizing their airspeed was plummeting.

The board, in the last of three days of hearings, is examining hiring and training at Pinnacle’s Colgan unit and the possibility of pilot error and fatigue in the February crash. Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, wrote the Federal Aviation Administration today urging a reevaluation of training criteria for pilots.

The pilots’ incorrect responses to the plane’s aerodynamic stall showed “they were discombobulated,” Hersman said. “This crew went from complacency to catastrophe. They didn’t see it coming.”

Cockpits may need automatic alerts to tell pilots their speed is dropping, she said.

“I don’t see any evidence he ever understood the situation he was in,” Robert Key Dismukes, a NASA Ames Research Center expert on cockpit distraction, said of the plane’s pilot, Marvin Renslow.

Conversations between Renslow, 47, and copilot Rebecca Shaw, 24, about icing on the plane were “leading them away from what to do next,” Dismukes said. Neither had much experience flying in icing, he said, based on his reading of the transcript from the cockpit flight recorder. Communications from a controller at a critical phase in the flight “didn’t help the workload situation,” he said.

‘Lot of Distractions’

NTSB member Kitty Higgins said “there were a lot of distractions” for the pilots. “They didn’t anticipate this event at all.”

The Bombardier Inc. Dash 8 Q400 plane crashed Feb. 12 in Clarence Center, New York, as it approached Buffalo’s airport on a flight from Newark, New Jersey. The dead included one person on the ground and all 49 people on board the plane, operated by Pinnacle’s Colgan unit for Continental Airlines Inc.

NTSB evidence revealed that the pilots let the plane, which was approaching Buffalo at 2,300 feet, lose more than a quarter of its airspeed in 21 seconds after reducing engine thrust, lowering the landing gear and extending the wing flaps.

The result was a cockpit warning of an aerodynamic stall, a condition in which planes lose sufficient lift to stay aloft.

In response, Renslow pulled the nose of the plane up and increased speed, according to the NTSB. That was “incorrect,” as he should have boosted speed while lowering the nose, Wally Warner, a Bombardier test pilot, told the NTSB on May 12.

“Yesterday we found out that the pilot of Flight 3407 was not properly trained to use certain equipment that could have possible helped him save the flight from crashing,” Schumer said in a statement accompanying his letter to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. “While it is impossible to eliminate all human error, proper training can help to minimize the risk.”

To contact the reporters on this story: John Hughes in Washington at jhughes5@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: May 14, 2009 11:45 EDT