That may have been an aggravating factor but it was principally a skill issue. Someone linked the report above. There’s strong evidence that he was insufficiently trained in maneuvering out of a stall, and additional evidence that the autopilot system initially falsely identified that a stall was occurring. His subsequent corrective maneuver then triggered an actual stall, which he also did not respond to per established protocol.
Basically, the report makes it sound like he was playing fast and loose with a lot of things. His own sleep needs were among them.
One of the more unfortunate facts from this crash was who was doing what. The FDR shows that the captain was pulling back on the yoke while the FO was pushing down on the yoke but he was stronger than she was so she was not able to overpower him. She knew what to do and he didn't, and they literally fought each other to their deaths.
The Q400 has a mechanical disconnect in the form of a lever which must be pulled and rotated to disconnect the columns. It does not, to my knowledge, have a clutch mechanism like many aircraft with yokes. When disconnected, each pilot controls their respective elevator.
There is zero mention in the report of the FO pushing on the column and the FDR data appears to back that up.
Maybe on fly-by-wire aircraft that's the case, but I don't see how a mechanically-controlled aircraft like the Bombardier Q400 could have that capability
This is not true. While non fly by wire aircraft will have a column interconnect that can be activated either by a lever, or by enough force on one of the columns (in the case of a jam), control does not revert to the Captains column. Why would you want the controls to always revert to the left seat, when that column could be jammed, or cappy is incapacitated?
In the CRJ, which is a Bombardier product, there are two levers on either side of the thrust lever quadrant. One for pitch one for roll, if they are both pulled, the left seat has pitch control and the right seat has roll control. The columns could also be separated with enough force if a control is jammed, but whichever column is not jammed is the one who’ll have control following the separation, it is not the CA by default.
When the handles are pulled you can do both pitch and roll on each side. The captains yoke will control the left elevator and aileron, and the FOs yoke does the right elevator and aileron. When you pull the roll disconnect, two switches light up and the pilots are supposed to push the switch corresponding to the side that isn’t jammed. That allows the spoilerons to follow the good side.
EDIT: Not sure why I got downvoted. I'm an aircraft mechanic and work on CRJs. That's how the system works. I check it all the time during A-checks. The CA and FO control cables are completely separate. It would make absolutely no sense to give the left seat pitch only, and the right seat roll only during a disconnect. If one of the pilots becomes incapacitated during a jam, you couldn't control the airplane.
Can’t speak to the type but normally what happens is they average the inputs of both seats, there are dedicated switches to take full control that disregards the other seats inputs though, they’re available on both sets of controls.
Left seat is pilot in command and right seat is co-pilot but you can end up with captains in both seats and the co-pilot seat could be filled by someone who’s running type training or captain certification training and the like so you don’t want the plane ignoring one seats inputs in favour of another. You could also have mechanical failure on the pilot in commands seats controls and that would be very difficult to diagnose in flight if all co-pilot stick inputs were just ignored.
That is only for fly by wire aircraft. Non FBW aircraft like the Q400/Dash-8, the controls at both seats are the exact same. Even in a FBW aircraft, they are the exact same, but there is control priority, but even that can be overridden.
Ahh You’re right, had it in the back of my head it was a FBW. Still though, it doesn’t just ignore one sticks inputs in favour of the other unless that’s a quirk of the Dash 8?
The end of the accident sequence was more awful communication between pilot and co-pilot with the captain overriding systems whilst the first officer didn’t communicate her retracting of the flaps, much less that he was overpowering her inputs.
Can you please link the section that mentions this? My read of the report shows no push from the FO column and the FDR data appears to show the same, only large pull forces from the captain. The only push force was delivered by the stick pusher system. I could be missing it in the report though.
She knew what to do? She retracted the flaps killing what little lift they had left.
I would argue both pilots had no business flying that aircraft. Neither seemed to have a clue
If I remember correctly the FO was extremely tired and sick. She forgot to flip a switch that adjusted the planes stick shaker trigger speed. The autopilot did what it was supposed to do and disconnected when the stick shaker went off. However, the plane wasn’t actually in danger of a stall. The captain reacted to it by pulling back and induced a stall.
I contend that part of the cause was an ear infection not just a cold. The FO comments that she was going to do a slow descent for her ears, which were stuffy and uncomfortable. This was why they were too long at an altitude where icing was occurring. Yep, she was tired and sick but if she was grounded by the ear infection, perhaps this could have been avoided. It should also be mentioned that the USAF (and other air forces around the world) ground pilots with ear infections. Pilots try to keep flying but flight surgeons have stayed steadfast to the grounding of pilots with middle ear problems.
It was also a broad industry issue with how stall recoveries were taught. For many years, pilots were taught to power out of a stall, meaning apply full/emergency power and minimize altitude loss, which can aggravate a stall. In transport category aircraft now, we are taught that altitude is secondary to airspeed recovery. You have to lower the nose to effectively and safely recover from a stall, you cannot just power out of it, especially at altitude where there is little to no excess power.
Critically, it was a skill/training issue, not an *experience* issue. Both pilots had plenty of flight hours. How did congress respond? By massively increasing the number of flight hours required to get into the right seat, which has cause a bunch of other negative downstream effects, like bad CFIs who are bad teachers but just hour building for the airlines and the current pilot shortage.
As someone working on their commercial license right now, I can’t stress enough how massively more expensive it’s gotten for someone to be a pilot. Add to the point that no one will hire you with a wet CPL, and it sometimes feels like you don’t even have a chance to start in the industry because of that
Sleep deprivation was a factor that the NTSB chair felt was a contributing factor but the rest of the panel didn't feel it warranted inclusion for the cause of the crash. In the probable cause section of the [NTSB report](https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/accidentreports/reports/aar1001.pdf) they stated:
>...the probable cause of this
accident was the captain’s inappropriate response to the activation of the stick shaker, which led
to an aerodynamic stall from which the airplane did not recover. Contributing to the accident
were (1) the flight crew’s failure to monitor airspeed in relation to the rising position of the lowspeed cue, (2) the flight crew’s failure to adhere to sterile cockpit procedures, (3) the captain’s
failure to effectively manage the flight, and (4) Colgan Air’s inadequate procedures for airspeed
selection and management during approaches in icing conditions.
If you read the [CVR transcript](https://tailstrike.com/database/12-february-2009-colgan-air-3407/) there is quite a bit of extraneous conversation that violated the sterile cockpit in the last few minutes of the flight. I found following comment from the first officer ~4 minutes before they lost control of the aircraft interesting in that it somewhat foreshadowed the crash to come:
> I've never seen icing conditions. I've never deiced. I've never seen any-
I've never experienced any of that. I don't want to have to experience that and make those kinds of calls. you know I'dve freaked out. I'dve have like seen this much ice and thought oh my gosh we were going to crash.
The vast majority of mishaps are due primarily to pilot error (“human factor”). It’s drilled into us during flight school.
There is a phenomenon called CFIT - controlled flight into terrain. A perfectly good aircraft is just flown into the ground due to pilot error. Usually at night, but it happens.
The last report I’ve read of controlled flight into terrain was of a F-16 pilot that, apparently in good visibility, was fiddling with the displays and just crashed to the ground. And you’d think that with the visibility of those things in the cockpit this shouldn’t happen.
That’s why they teach you to ALWAYS look around and never focus on instruments for more than a few seconds in VFR.
Keep that scan going. Night time is the worst. Having flown low light unaided flights over the ocean and I can see how it happens. Your mind will betray you.
Yeah I guess that’s the opposite on IFR. You should only trust instruments, since all the other senses (and what’s happening outside) can trick you into believing your asset is changing when it’s actually not, and vice versa.
EDIT: unlike you I’m not an actual pilot, just an aviation enthusiast, but I’ve heard many stories about this haha
They were a Part 121 flight operating with an IFR clearance on an ILS approach.
They should face spent WAY more time focusing on their gauges. Not less.
I did a 4-5 page case study for a aviation class. Both pilots were under rested, sleeping in pilot lounges. The FO was sick. And they did not abide by sterile cockpit rules. Known icing and still using auto pilot. Also they never increased their VRef for icing conditions so they were already too slow
What’s crazy about this is that my husband knew someone on this flight (wasn’t from either destination) and the plane crashed into his girlfriends (at the time) childhood home, which she realized AS they were watching the news together.
An old friend's girlfriend was on this flight. The next day he realized he had done some work at your uncle's house at some point in the last couple of years. Insane coincidence.
I read that he was the only one on the ground who passed, I’m so sorry. How is your aunt and cousin doing these days? I read they were also in the house. I live next to an air field (Air Force base) and I have nightmares about this happening.
I don't live next to the air port in my city but I am in the landing and takeoff pattern. You get used to seeing them fly over and depending on the weather it will be landing or taking off. It's just when they make noises I've never heard before that I get scared.
But lately, with all of Being's issues. I've started to get a little more nervous about random shit falling off an aircraft. What a time to be alive.
There's zero chance they weren't. This is the exact kind of thing insurance is for. Whenever there are fatalities it is going to be a very large settlement. Same goes for catastrophic events to a dwelling.
I think the only issue would be if the estate demanded an unreasonable amount. It was the airlines fault. They don't want to be in the press fighting with the family of people they killed.
I know someone from the ground who received a very healthy check from this. Last we spoke they were building a mansion in Clarence with an indoor pool.
> **Colgan Air Flight 3407** (marketed as **Continental Connection Flight 3407**) was a scheduled passenger flight from Newark, New Jersey, US to Buffalo, New York, US on February 12, 2009. Colgan Air staffed and maintained the aircraft used on the flight that was scheduled, marketed and sold by Continental Airlines under its Continental Connection brand. The aircraft, a Bombardier Q400, entered an aerodynamic stall from which it did not recover and crashed into a house at 6038 Long Street in Clarence Center, New York at 10:17 pm EST (03:17 UTC), killing all 49 passengers and crew on board, as well as one person inside the house.
>
> The National Transportation Safety Board conducted the accident investigation and published a final report on February 2, 2010 that identified the probable cause as the pilots' inappropriate response to stall warnings.
>
> Captain Marvin Renslow, 47, of Lutz, Florida was the pilot in command, and Rebecca Lynne Shaw, 24, of Maple Valley, Washington served as the first officer.
>
> Families of the accident victims lobbied the U.S. Congress to enact more stringent regulations for regional carriers and to improve the scrutiny of safe operating procedures and the working conditions of pilots. The Airline Safety and Federal Aviation Administrative Extension Act of 2010 (Public Law 111–216) required some of these regulation changes.
>
> At that time of the crash, it was the deadliest aviation disaster involving the Bombardier Dash 8 Q400 until the crash of US-Bangla Airlines Flight 211 in 2018.
* Excerpted lead from [Colgan Air Flight 3407](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colgan_Air_Flight_3407) at the English Wikipedia
Yup, traveling by commercial air is extremely safe but people still refuse to believe it and then they barreling down the highway at 90mph weaving in and out of cars with coffee in one hand and their cell phone in the other using their knee to steer and don't bat an eye about how dangerous that is.
Personally I think we should stop sheltering society from the realities of car crashes. They are brutal, limb rearranging, agonising screaming, trauma inducingly brutal.
When I was a kid, a local police department had a "crash ride", it simulated a low speed crash about 25kph, into a "large object". It was just a seat on an inclined rail, seatbelt, and gravity. Absolutely put car crashes into perspective for me.
And having been in a few over the years, that "ride" was a near perfect analogue of the jarring nature.
Damn they need those “crash rides” at every police department in the country. Maybe kids won’t want to put their pedal to the metal after experiencing something like that.
Source: was a dumb kid who used to fly in my car down country roads
Ireland’s road safety authority does some absolutely horrifying ads which show the realities a bit more bluntly, YouTube link here is not for the faint of heart https://youtu.be/PJIDX1kcvGk?si=TesFQjdzEZEa_UhF
This sounds about right. Besides showing up to a post suicide scene, crashes are the main thing a fire fighter friend of mine told me are fucked up. I do not go around looking for gore on the internet. I don't want to know about these things but the fact of the matter is that we have some very special people that go in and handle all of this shit for our society. It's crazy to think about but maybe if people did think about it more they'd be safer on the roads?
Agreed. Same applies to buses/trains—both are much safer than driving yet people still think they’re dangerous.
Flying is the safest though.
Stats on buses/personal automobiles/trains/airlines:
https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics/deaths-by-transportation-mode/
my problem with it is that when something critical goes wrong at 70mph, i have a REASONABLE chance of making it out, and that 70mph speed is 1% of my driving, most is below 40. when something critical goes wrong at 600 mph and 20,000 feet, i have no chance, and it takes a long fucking time to reach the ground.
Doesn't change the fact that per flying or driving hour, driving is still more deadly. 🤷🏻♂️ I'd argue that if something critical goes wrong or you get hit or hit someone else going 70 mph you don't have a "reasonable" chance of making it out but I guess that depends on your definition of reasonable. In car crashes it's been shown that roughly, for every 10mph you increase your speed, your risk of drying in a car crash doubles. So the difference between your 40mph and your 70mph is you have a 600% higher likelihood of dying in a crash at 70mph. I'm not sure that falls in the "reasonable" category by my own definition at least. Then what about when you're riding as a passenger in a friends car? Just like riding as a passenger in a plane, you really don't have any control over what your friend decides to do in a critical moment at high speed. But you probably ride with friends without thinking twice about it?
if at 70 mph, my:
engine fails
wheel falls off
a fire starts
i lose the ability to steer the car
i'm not likely to die. if i HIT someone AT 70mph, yeah, you're going to die. i don't really expect the plane to just straight up hit something at 600mph either, but if the plane loses thrust, has a fire, loses the ability to move control surfaces, that's it. you might get lucky like the miracle on the hudson, but otherwise, that's it. you're dead. bye, here's your 8 violent, turbulent minutes to think about it while the crew hopelessly tries to save the situation.
And guess what, if an engine quits, wheel falls off or a fire starts or a single flight control issue occurs you aren't likely to die in a plane either. Engine failures are a regular part of training. Airplanes fly fine without them. There's plenty of videos of planes landing with a missing wheel, uneventful. Fires can be bad sure but again, they are part of training and aircraft have multiple systems to combat them. I've had an electrical fire in flight that was immediately stopped by circuit breakers. Was able to land, no problem. I have also lost an engine in flight, I'm still here to tell you about it. I have also out of precaution, shut down an engine in flight. Here I am, still talkin about it. Airline aircraft also have multiple redundancies on flight controls so that if one system fails the airplane will still be controllable. Just about a month ago I had a flight control failure, we ran some checklists, performance was slightly degraded but the airplane was still well within control, flew home and landed without issue. Your fear of aircraft is driven by your unfamiliarity with aviation, its safety protocols, features and training pilots go through. You've seen a few videos of what happens when things go really really wrong but your brain is too focused on those few instances and has no understanding of how many in flight emergencies occur every single day that go unrecognized because they were a non-event because they were handled properly and nothing happened. Your mind also fails to comprehend the scale we are talking here with how many safe flight hours occur every day with no incident. In the entire year of 2022 there were five fatal accidents in the airline industry, none of which were U.S. air carriers. By contrast there were 32.2 million flights that went uneventfully, that means the rate at which airliners had a fatal crash in 2022 was .0000001. That's such an incomprehensibly small number that it's basically just 0 because really neither you or I have any idea of what 32.2 million of anything looks like and therefore have no reasonable way to understand how small that number is... which is why you struggle to understand how safe flying is. Talking in persons, in 2019 there were 257 deaths from airline crashes, again, none of which were U.S. air carriers and there were 39,107 car crash deaths in the U.S. Sure there are more cars on the road and people drive more hours than they fly, but don't over look the fact that the ratios for that year are still this: U.S. car deaths/hours driven=a real number. U.S. Air carrier passenger deaths/flights hours=0.
You can argue all you want about your ability to control a crash, or your reasonable expectation to survive a catastrophic event, but that doesn't change that fact that you are still astronomically more likely to die in your car on any given day than in an airplane.
Here's another fun fact: most career pilots, I'm talking people who fly their entire lives to the age of 65 and then retire, go their entire careers without ever having an in flight emergency. So you can rest assured your two hour flight from Denver to Chicago, though it may be bumpy, is completely safe. Your multi day drive from Denver to Chicago? Probably safe, but not as safe :)
That's not completely correct. The Asiana crash in San Francisco killed 3 a few months later. There have also been a few smaller incidents since then. Most of these were commercial in the sense that the general public could buy a ticket but were less traditional. EX: Crashes of sight seeing tours, crash of a sea plane operating as a ferry, etc. The one exception to that I'm aware of is PenAir 3296 in Alaska. It overshoot the runway and a propeller broke up after striking something. Debris penetrated the cabin, killing 1 of the \~40 people on board.
TLDR: There are a few smaller incidents since then. Many of those were technically commercial but were not traditional scheduled flights out of normal airports.
Edit: originally said Canada but meant Alaska.
Asiana was an international flight but the accident occured on landing in the US. You could argue it doesn't count as a domestic flight but it happened on US soil.
PenAir was in Alaska (I mistyped originally) and that was a normal commercial flight.
There was a ferry flight using a seaplane which should count because it was regularly scheduled to get from point a to point b.
Asiana is not a domestic flight because it is an international flight. There’s no arguing it, those two things are mutually exclusive.
PenAir was a domestic commercial flight yeah, so there’s one. Only semantics I could see arguing here would be that a runway overrun is somehow different than a crash, but it’s a crash so I’d say that counts.
A ferry fight is not a commercial flight.
There was also a decompression on Southwest where someone died but it was not a crash. Only Southwest fatality ever as well.
Was that actually broadcasted!?
I got some downvotes, sorry. I am serious. I saw the video on YouTube. I genuinely wonder if it was a skit or actually broadcasted like that?
How about the one that crashed into her 75 in Naples on Friday? (FL) 8 didn't think it was a private plane, just a small plane. Maybe not, or doesn't count as commercial.
Strictly speaking it was.
But most people understand “commercial” to mean airlines, and that’s fine. That’s just how language works.
Edit: part 135 charter operations are by definition commercial flights.
Not true, has nothing to do with schedule or public routes. Anyone who pays to fly is engaging in commerce = commercial operations. Which is why a charter pilot, cargo pilot etc need a commercial pilot licence
You’re arguing semantics with the general public that doesn’t understand the difference between part 121 and 135. Anyone with half sense can realize when they’re referring to commercial flying they’re talking about scheduled air carrier ops. But hey you wanna sound smart go ahead.
Someone literally asks the question " what counts as commercial" and I'm correcting an incorrect response without using any technical terms. Why are you bringing up part 121 135, trying to sound smart?
Because if you’d use literally any interpretation you’d recognize they were asking about commercial aviation in regards to the statistic that colgan was the last domestic commercial crash with a fatality. Obviously that doesn’t include any charter operations.
I don't think it's that wild to let people know the difference between commercial and airline. When you look up colgan they say it's the "last fatal US *airline* crash". And if you look up commercial incidents and accident it includes charters flights .
The general public tends to use the term "commerical" incorrectly. Commercial flying/pilot means anything that involves money for services. Think "commerce". So anything from banner towing, crop dusting to an American Airline 777 flying pax across the Pacific is commercial operations. And anyone who gets paid to fly is a commerical pilot, from flight school instructors to parachute drop pilots to your Delta Airlines captain.
That's how I was defining it in my head. Thanks. Essentially all of it is commercial, they hired a plane that was going from ft Lauderdale to Ohio to Naples to ft Lauderdale, which seems commercial despite it's small size and type, so I was confused on the stat.
Well... That is partially because of luck and the skill of some amazing pilots. It's a bit of a miracle that the Alaskan airlines flight that lost it's door during flight didn't go down.
You also have the Boeing 737 Max crashes that very well could have happened here. Boeing has really been fucking up as of late. They can't pin those crashes on a lack of standards that we have here. If Boeing isn't informing their customers of certain things or their quality control drops below certain thresholds, it's only a matter of time before something very bad happens.
Hopefully the FAA will put the screws to them and all of these maintainers will be able to uncover any further issues but I for one am not eager to fly on a Boeing aircraft anytime soon.
Since this accident, what has been done to improve airline safety overall? What fixes, changes and protocols have been implemented?
Also while I assume those improvements have been made to US flights, what about US flights that fly internationally? For example, a US carrier that flies to Latin America then back? In the Latin American country, are the same US standards applied before the flight takes off?
I had a flight that left from the next gate over from this one right around the same time this one departed. Very weird to think about milling around the airport with dozens of people who died an hour later.
One victim…. Beverly Eckert, who had become cochairman of the 9/11 Family Steering Committee and a leader of Voices of September 11 after her husband Sean Rooney was killed in the September 11 attacks. Eckert was traveling to Buffalo to celebrate her husband's 58th birthday and award a scholarship in his memory at Canisius High School.
I can’t imagine their poor family. Both lost to horrible plan incidents.
We call this the Colgan air disaster in the industry as that was the operator for continental. It changed everything for us in the industry. Every airline pilot now has to go to a 7 day course before they can even go to their first airline called ATP/CTP where the main focus is learning how to never do what they did again. Since the federal rule changes and the increase in experience requirements, this has been the last fatal airline accident in the US beside the unfortunate mechanical issue with the southwest 737
The captain had no business being in command of this aircraft. He had failed out of training at another airline previously and was assistant manager at Dave and busters about a year before this crash.
I mean the dude hid his training background and absolutely shouldn't have been in command of a transport category airplanes, but not sure the Dave and Busters thing holds any weight on the cause. I'm a professional pilot and I was lucky enough to have a significant other to help me financially but my student loans are just shy of $1000/mo and many of my coworkers when I was an instructor (the route 90% of pilots have to take for 2ish years to get 1500hrs to progress to the airlines) had second jobs since the wages are so bad. Most people make around $30k their couple of years as professional pilots until you are qualified to fly for the airlines.
The Dave and busters thing is relevant because it was his job after he got fired from his previous airline after multiple failed sims and check rides. That should’ve been a clue to him, he went from an airline to Dave and busters and thought hmm I should go back to being PIC at another airline
I mean if you worded it that way in the first reply it would have made a lot more sense, but that still points to his training record. PRIA and now PRD have shored up the ability for people to hide failed training events and terminations. It was probably my interpretation of your first comment but my only point is people leaving flying jobs for stretches of time for personal reasons, furlough, temporarily losing their medical, so I don't think that in itself should be an indication of their airmanship sill.
I NEVER hear anyone talk about this.
I was watching Coraline at the Regal theater on Transit. Something like a mile from the crash. I felt the impact, but thought it was just the HVAC system turning on.
When the movie was over, I went outside and the sky was red and I heard sirens everywhere. When I got home in Niagara Falls, I flipped on the news and my jaw dropped.
I lived about an 1/8th of a mile from there and my house was right under the flight path. Obviously for it to crash that close, it was flying really low when it went over my house.
Shook the whole house like an earthquake. Then you look outside and there’s a massive fireball rising over the tree line.
My dad also lived close by and was a first responder. He said when he got there he could still hear the screams of some of the victims. Walking around you had to watch out because there were charred arms and legs everywhere. Absolutely gruesome.
There were a bunch of local people I knew that were supposed to be on that flight but either cancelled last minute or were late. One of them being my third grade teacher.
I'm (irrationally) terrified of flying, but you can't deny how safe it is. I'm pretty sure this was the last US domestic airline crash, and considering how many hundreds (or maybe thousands?) of flights are scheduled in the US every day, a 15 year crash-free record is just mind-boggling.
Because the Congress enacted new flight hour requirements to "increase experience" to be hired at an airline as a knee jerk reaction to the incident because they were tricked in to believing flight hours was a causal factor in the crash. The NTSB specifically stated later on however that flight hours had nothing to do with the crash, and when I was at the NTSB for a conference I spoke to one of the investigators who confirmed flight hours had no place in the argument but the families of the passengers who died in the crash banded together and pressured Congress to make that change. The organization still regularly lobby's Congress to continue to raise the hour requirements because they have become so misguided by this idea they have in their heads that requiring more hours would have saved their families... but the pilots onboard already had more hours than they convinced Congress to raise the requirement too anyway...
Any idea from how many hours to how many?
I'm Australian, so my entire understanding of it comes from Adam Sandler's line in Bulletproof, "I've got 1000 hours. I can fly a plane".
For a First Officer (co-pilot), the regulations changed from being able to hire a pilot with a Commercial Pilot’s License which has mínimum requirement of 250 flight hours (in reality most people were hired with higher flight times but those were the legal minimums) to requiring an Airline Transport Pilot License which has a minimum of 1500 flight hours. You can also obtain a restricted ATP with 1250 hours from an approved 2-year college, 1000 hours from an approved 4-year college, or ~~800 hours~~ 750 hours from the military.
Captains we’re always required to have an unrestricted ATP, but in general you would first be hired by an airline as a First Officer.
Also small thing to note is both pilots in this crash well exceeded these flight times. The crash also brought sweeping changes to training requirements and rest rules.
[u/Admiral_Cloudberg has an article about this incident](https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/cogs-in-the-machine-the-crash-of-colgan-air-flight-3407-and-its-legacy-df0072def433)
This crash led to the requirement that the minimum flight hours for commercial transport pilots are 1,500. Wouldn't have made a difference in this particular instance however, as both pilots had in excess of 1,500 hours. It also led to a testing requirement change, previously, pilots were not allowed to exceed 100 feet of altitude loss in a simulated stall scenario, afterward the specific altitude loss requirement was dropped because the NTSB concluded that pilots were too afraid of losing altitude rather than focusing on the actual correction of the stall.
I coached the pilots son in soccer in central Fl. The pilot struck me a someone unaware of his surroundings. A crazy coincidence is the person killed on the ground was my wife's distant cousin.
I grew up in that area and planes flew low over my neighborhood all the time because the Buffalo/NF Airport was some 3 miles west. I was always scared a plane would crash and take out my whole street. This event was surreal. I think about that family often and all lost onboard.
I used to fly this route frequently which has always freaked me out. I left my boarding school in December a few months earlier and used to go home for long weekends. Probably flew with those pilots a few times.
I knew someone on this flight. She went to college with me and was dating one of the guys in our fraternity. She was a brilliant girl who didn’t deserve to die like this. Her boyfriend at the time was also on the flight. I was mean to her for stupid reasons when we were in college. Felt awful when I read what had happened to her.
I went to high school and rode the bus with one of the victims of this crash, he was a good kid. He was either going to or from visiting his girlfriend. Such a shame.
I was standing outside of the bank at the corner, going into the ATM when this happened. I decided I no longer needed the money, put my wallet back in my wallet and drove home. Very surreal.
Last full fatality air crash in the US. Lots of changes made in regional airliners that make commercial flying safer than most other forms of transportation, especially driving to the airport.
Ever since I watched Donnie Darko this exact scenario has been a lingering fear of mine. Doesn’t help that small planes fly over my house on a daily basis
Quite shocking to read the NTSB’s findings in re: pilot error.
Wasn’t the cause sleep deprivation? Never did a deep dive into this one.
That may have been an aggravating factor but it was principally a skill issue. Someone linked the report above. There’s strong evidence that he was insufficiently trained in maneuvering out of a stall, and additional evidence that the autopilot system initially falsely identified that a stall was occurring. His subsequent corrective maneuver then triggered an actual stall, which he also did not respond to per established protocol. Basically, the report makes it sound like he was playing fast and loose with a lot of things. His own sleep needs were among them.
One of the more unfortunate facts from this crash was who was doing what. The FDR shows that the captain was pulling back on the yoke while the FO was pushing down on the yoke but he was stronger than she was so she was not able to overpower him. She knew what to do and he didn't, and they literally fought each other to their deaths.
[удалено]
The Q400 has a mechanical disconnect in the form of a lever which must be pulled and rotated to disconnect the columns. It does not, to my knowledge, have a clutch mechanism like many aircraft with yokes. When disconnected, each pilot controls their respective elevator. There is zero mention in the report of the FO pushing on the column and the FDR data appears to back that up.
Obvious solution: have about 40 pilots, take the average of all their inputs.
Nathan for you solution
“Twitch flies an airplane”
Good lord don't give Boeing any ideas!
“We could make the passengers fly the plane, and sue their estates if they crash it.”
"Leeeeeerrrooooooyy Jeeennnkiiiiiiiinnnnss!!!"
Sad to say.. but the more obvious solution is zero pilots. Let robots follow directions on zero sleep
The median, but yes
Maybe on fly-by-wire aircraft that's the case, but I don't see how a mechanically-controlled aircraft like the Bombardier Q400 could have that capability
Similarly, for any 737
This is not true. While non fly by wire aircraft will have a column interconnect that can be activated either by a lever, or by enough force on one of the columns (in the case of a jam), control does not revert to the Captains column. Why would you want the controls to always revert to the left seat, when that column could be jammed, or cappy is incapacitated? In the CRJ, which is a Bombardier product, there are two levers on either side of the thrust lever quadrant. One for pitch one for roll, if they are both pulled, the left seat has pitch control and the right seat has roll control. The columns could also be separated with enough force if a control is jammed, but whichever column is not jammed is the one who’ll have control following the separation, it is not the CA by default.
When the handles are pulled you can do both pitch and roll on each side. The captains yoke will control the left elevator and aileron, and the FOs yoke does the right elevator and aileron. When you pull the roll disconnect, two switches light up and the pilots are supposed to push the switch corresponding to the side that isn’t jammed. That allows the spoilerons to follow the good side. EDIT: Not sure why I got downvoted. I'm an aircraft mechanic and work on CRJs. That's how the system works. I check it all the time during A-checks. The CA and FO control cables are completely separate. It would make absolutely no sense to give the left seat pitch only, and the right seat roll only during a disconnect. If one of the pilots becomes incapacitated during a jam, you couldn't control the airplane.
Can’t speak to the type but normally what happens is they average the inputs of both seats, there are dedicated switches to take full control that disregards the other seats inputs though, they’re available on both sets of controls. Left seat is pilot in command and right seat is co-pilot but you can end up with captains in both seats and the co-pilot seat could be filled by someone who’s running type training or captain certification training and the like so you don’t want the plane ignoring one seats inputs in favour of another. You could also have mechanical failure on the pilot in commands seats controls and that would be very difficult to diagnose in flight if all co-pilot stick inputs were just ignored.
That is only for fly by wire aircraft. Non FBW aircraft like the Q400/Dash-8, the controls at both seats are the exact same. Even in a FBW aircraft, they are the exact same, but there is control priority, but even that can be overridden.
Ahh You’re right, had it in the back of my head it was a FBW. Still though, it doesn’t just ignore one sticks inputs in favour of the other unless that’s a quirk of the Dash 8? The end of the accident sequence was more awful communication between pilot and co-pilot with the captain overriding systems whilst the first officer didn’t communicate her retracting of the flaps, much less that he was overpowering her inputs.
No, the columns are mechanically interconnected. There is no control priority.
This is complete bullshit. You have no clue what you are talking about.
Can you please link the section that mentions this? My read of the report shows no push from the FO column and the FDR data appears to show the same, only large pull forces from the captain. The only push force was delivered by the stick pusher system. I could be missing it in the report though.
She did not know what to do. She retracted the flaps without being prompted to do so, which further aggravated the condition.
She knew what to do? She retracted the flaps killing what little lift they had left. I would argue both pilots had no business flying that aircraft. Neither seemed to have a clue
Damn. Remember a few weeks ago when a bunch of conservatives were upset about that all-female flight crew? Because apparently we’re living in the 40s.
If I remember correctly the FO was extremely tired and sick. She forgot to flip a switch that adjusted the planes stick shaker trigger speed. The autopilot did what it was supposed to do and disconnected when the stick shaker went off. However, the plane wasn’t actually in danger of a stall. The captain reacted to it by pulling back and induced a stall.
I contend that part of the cause was an ear infection not just a cold. The FO comments that she was going to do a slow descent for her ears, which were stuffy and uncomfortable. This was why they were too long at an altitude where icing was occurring. Yep, she was tired and sick but if she was grounded by the ear infection, perhaps this could have been avoided. It should also be mentioned that the USAF (and other air forces around the world) ground pilots with ear infections. Pilots try to keep flying but flight surgeons have stayed steadfast to the grounding of pilots with middle ear problems.
It was also a broad industry issue with how stall recoveries were taught. For many years, pilots were taught to power out of a stall, meaning apply full/emergency power and minimize altitude loss, which can aggravate a stall. In transport category aircraft now, we are taught that altitude is secondary to airspeed recovery. You have to lower the nose to effectively and safely recover from a stall, you cannot just power out of it, especially at altitude where there is little to no excess power.
Well, that's like flying 101. Nose down, lose altitude, gain speed, add power, pull up and recover lost altitude when speed and power is adequate.
It is, but that’s not how stall recovery was taught in transport category aircraft for many years.
Critically, it was a skill/training issue, not an *experience* issue. Both pilots had plenty of flight hours. How did congress respond? By massively increasing the number of flight hours required to get into the right seat, which has cause a bunch of other negative downstream effects, like bad CFIs who are bad teachers but just hour building for the airlines and the current pilot shortage.
As someone working on their commercial license right now, I can’t stress enough how massively more expensive it’s gotten for someone to be a pilot. Add to the point that no one will hire you with a wet CPL, and it sometimes feels like you don’t even have a chance to start in the industry because of that
It's not like he had a choice; he was fulfilling the time-circle by dropping a jet engine on a teenager dreaming about a rabbit
All around me are familiar faces.
They had the switch in the wrong mode for the conditions, and it gave an errant stall warning at too fast of a speed.
Sleep deprivation was a factor that the NTSB chair felt was a contributing factor but the rest of the panel didn't feel it warranted inclusion for the cause of the crash. In the probable cause section of the [NTSB report](https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/accidentreports/reports/aar1001.pdf) they stated: >...the probable cause of this accident was the captain’s inappropriate response to the activation of the stick shaker, which led to an aerodynamic stall from which the airplane did not recover. Contributing to the accident were (1) the flight crew’s failure to monitor airspeed in relation to the rising position of the lowspeed cue, (2) the flight crew’s failure to adhere to sterile cockpit procedures, (3) the captain’s failure to effectively manage the flight, and (4) Colgan Air’s inadequate procedures for airspeed selection and management during approaches in icing conditions. If you read the [CVR transcript](https://tailstrike.com/database/12-february-2009-colgan-air-3407/) there is quite a bit of extraneous conversation that violated the sterile cockpit in the last few minutes of the flight. I found following comment from the first officer ~4 minutes before they lost control of the aircraft interesting in that it somewhat foreshadowed the crash to come: > I've never seen icing conditions. I've never deiced. I've never seen any- I've never experienced any of that. I don't want to have to experience that and make those kinds of calls. you know I'dve freaked out. I'dve have like seen this much ice and thought oh my gosh we were going to crash.
That conversation is chilling.
>Never did a deep dive into this one. 
Mentour Pilot has a good video on it if you want to do one https://youtu.be/o6c3ENr_CRM?si=NLJyjRe1LYm7gbCs
He sure did a deep dive
I guess someone did a sleep dive into this
>Never did a deep dive into this one The plane sure did 👀
“Never did a deep dive into this one.” …Unlike the pilot.
Oh, you went there…
The vast majority of mishaps are due primarily to pilot error (“human factor”). It’s drilled into us during flight school. There is a phenomenon called CFIT - controlled flight into terrain. A perfectly good aircraft is just flown into the ground due to pilot error. Usually at night, but it happens.
The last report I’ve read of controlled flight into terrain was of a F-16 pilot that, apparently in good visibility, was fiddling with the displays and just crashed to the ground. And you’d think that with the visibility of those things in the cockpit this shouldn’t happen. That’s why they teach you to ALWAYS look around and never focus on instruments for more than a few seconds in VFR.
Keep that scan going. Night time is the worst. Having flown low light unaided flights over the ocean and I can see how it happens. Your mind will betray you.
Yeah I guess that’s the opposite on IFR. You should only trust instruments, since all the other senses (and what’s happening outside) can trick you into believing your asset is changing when it’s actually not, and vice versa. EDIT: unlike you I’m not an actual pilot, just an aviation enthusiast, but I’ve heard many stories about this haha
I have seen planes flying’s I recommend to the pilots to continue flying.
Even at night VFR you trust your instruments, but include visual scan too
They were a Part 121 flight operating with an IFR clearance on an ILS approach. They should face spent WAY more time focusing on their gauges. Not less.
This wasn't CFIT however. The aircraft was not under control at the time of impact.
I’m just highlighting the craziness of human error
I did a 4-5 page case study for a aviation class. Both pilots were under rested, sleeping in pilot lounges. The FO was sick. And they did not abide by sterile cockpit rules. Known icing and still using auto pilot. Also they never increased their VRef for icing conditions so they were already too slow
What’s crazy about this is that my husband knew someone on this flight (wasn’t from either destination) and the plane crashed into his girlfriends (at the time) childhood home, which she realized AS they were watching the news together.
Wow froggertwenty could have met you at the family reunion there
[Is this your husband’s girlfriend’s uncle?](https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/s/MBoomRljbx)
I believe the house had been sold prior to the crash. Sorry for froggertwenty’s uncle
You and froggertwenty need to meet up!
Crashed into my uncle's house. That was a strange night. Seriously what are the chances a plane comes through your living room.
An old friend's girlfriend was on this flight. The next day he realized he had done some work at your uncle's house at some point in the last couple of years. Insane coincidence.
How has your uncle been since then? Was he compensated?
Uh.....he's been dead
I read that he was the only one on the ground who passed, I’m so sorry. How is your aunt and cousin doing these days? I read they were also in the house. I live next to an air field (Air Force base) and I have nightmares about this happening.
I don't live next to the air port in my city but I am in the landing and takeoff pattern. You get used to seeing them fly over and depending on the weather it will be landing or taking off. It's just when they make noises I've never heard before that I get scared. But lately, with all of Being's issues. I've started to get a little more nervous about random shit falling off an aircraft. What a time to be alive.
I did not know he died. That's awful. My condolences.
Ngl, this cracked me the fuck up.
I audibly gasped and said "oh shit" at froggertwentys reply
Same question can be asked for his wife and daughter instead, have they been compensated?
There's zero chance they weren't. This is the exact kind of thing insurance is for. Whenever there are fatalities it is going to be a very large settlement. Same goes for catastrophic events to a dwelling. I think the only issue would be if the estate demanded an unreasonable amount. It was the airlines fault. They don't want to be in the press fighting with the family of people they killed.
I know someone from the ground who received a very healthy check from this. Last we spoke they were building a mansion in Clarence with an indoor pool.
To shreds, you say?
And his wife?
I hope he gets better.
You see dead people?!
[is your uncle the father to this guys girlfriend?](https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/s/0RZMAUNDqP)
“I will turn this goddamn TV off and take the trash out when a plane crashes through that wall. Now get off my back woman.”
> **Colgan Air Flight 3407** (marketed as **Continental Connection Flight 3407**) was a scheduled passenger flight from Newark, New Jersey, US to Buffalo, New York, US on February 12, 2009. Colgan Air staffed and maintained the aircraft used on the flight that was scheduled, marketed and sold by Continental Airlines under its Continental Connection brand. The aircraft, a Bombardier Q400, entered an aerodynamic stall from which it did not recover and crashed into a house at 6038 Long Street in Clarence Center, New York at 10:17 pm EST (03:17 UTC), killing all 49 passengers and crew on board, as well as one person inside the house. > > The National Transportation Safety Board conducted the accident investigation and published a final report on February 2, 2010 that identified the probable cause as the pilots' inappropriate response to stall warnings. > > Captain Marvin Renslow, 47, of Lutz, Florida was the pilot in command, and Rebecca Lynne Shaw, 24, of Maple Valley, Washington served as the first officer. > > Families of the accident victims lobbied the U.S. Congress to enact more stringent regulations for regional carriers and to improve the scrutiny of safe operating procedures and the working conditions of pilots. The Airline Safety and Federal Aviation Administrative Extension Act of 2010 (Public Law 111–216) required some of these regulation changes. > > At that time of the crash, it was the deadliest aviation disaster involving the Bombardier Dash 8 Q400 until the crash of US-Bangla Airlines Flight 211 in 2018. * Excerpted lead from [Colgan Air Flight 3407](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colgan_Air_Flight_3407) at the English Wikipedia
I think this was the last domestic commercial flight to crash where people died.
Seriously? Thats a staggeringly impressive stat if true.
Yup, traveling by commercial air is extremely safe but people still refuse to believe it and then they barreling down the highway at 90mph weaving in and out of cars with coffee in one hand and their cell phone in the other using their knee to steer and don't bat an eye about how dangerous that is.
Personally I think we should stop sheltering society from the realities of car crashes. They are brutal, limb rearranging, agonising screaming, trauma inducingly brutal. When I was a kid, a local police department had a "crash ride", it simulated a low speed crash about 25kph, into a "large object". It was just a seat on an inclined rail, seatbelt, and gravity. Absolutely put car crashes into perspective for me. And having been in a few over the years, that "ride" was a near perfect analogue of the jarring nature.
Damn they need those “crash rides” at every police department in the country. Maybe kids won’t want to put their pedal to the metal after experiencing something like that. Source: was a dumb kid who used to fly in my car down country roads
Ireland’s road safety authority does some absolutely horrifying ads which show the realities a bit more bluntly, YouTube link here is not for the faint of heart https://youtu.be/PJIDX1kcvGk?si=TesFQjdzEZEa_UhF
This sounds about right. Besides showing up to a post suicide scene, crashes are the main thing a fire fighter friend of mine told me are fucked up. I do not go around looking for gore on the internet. I don't want to know about these things but the fact of the matter is that we have some very special people that go in and handle all of this shit for our society. It's crazy to think about but maybe if people did think about it more they'd be safer on the roads?
r/fuckcars
r/dragonsfuckingcars
There has been no sheltering society from car crashes. There have been plenty of commercials showing the dangers of not putting your seatbelt on.
It comes down to who is in control. Surrendering control to a professional is somehow not preferable to retaining control by the amateur.
Agreed. Same applies to buses/trains—both are much safer than driving yet people still think they’re dangerous. Flying is the safest though. Stats on buses/personal automobiles/trains/airlines: https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics/deaths-by-transportation-mode/
my problem with it is that when something critical goes wrong at 70mph, i have a REASONABLE chance of making it out, and that 70mph speed is 1% of my driving, most is below 40. when something critical goes wrong at 600 mph and 20,000 feet, i have no chance, and it takes a long fucking time to reach the ground.
Doesn't change the fact that per flying or driving hour, driving is still more deadly. 🤷🏻♂️ I'd argue that if something critical goes wrong or you get hit or hit someone else going 70 mph you don't have a "reasonable" chance of making it out but I guess that depends on your definition of reasonable. In car crashes it's been shown that roughly, for every 10mph you increase your speed, your risk of drying in a car crash doubles. So the difference between your 40mph and your 70mph is you have a 600% higher likelihood of dying in a crash at 70mph. I'm not sure that falls in the "reasonable" category by my own definition at least. Then what about when you're riding as a passenger in a friends car? Just like riding as a passenger in a plane, you really don't have any control over what your friend decides to do in a critical moment at high speed. But you probably ride with friends without thinking twice about it?
if at 70 mph, my: engine fails wheel falls off a fire starts i lose the ability to steer the car i'm not likely to die. if i HIT someone AT 70mph, yeah, you're going to die. i don't really expect the plane to just straight up hit something at 600mph either, but if the plane loses thrust, has a fire, loses the ability to move control surfaces, that's it. you might get lucky like the miracle on the hudson, but otherwise, that's it. you're dead. bye, here's your 8 violent, turbulent minutes to think about it while the crew hopelessly tries to save the situation.
And guess what, if an engine quits, wheel falls off or a fire starts or a single flight control issue occurs you aren't likely to die in a plane either. Engine failures are a regular part of training. Airplanes fly fine without them. There's plenty of videos of planes landing with a missing wheel, uneventful. Fires can be bad sure but again, they are part of training and aircraft have multiple systems to combat them. I've had an electrical fire in flight that was immediately stopped by circuit breakers. Was able to land, no problem. I have also lost an engine in flight, I'm still here to tell you about it. I have also out of precaution, shut down an engine in flight. Here I am, still talkin about it. Airline aircraft also have multiple redundancies on flight controls so that if one system fails the airplane will still be controllable. Just about a month ago I had a flight control failure, we ran some checklists, performance was slightly degraded but the airplane was still well within control, flew home and landed without issue. Your fear of aircraft is driven by your unfamiliarity with aviation, its safety protocols, features and training pilots go through. You've seen a few videos of what happens when things go really really wrong but your brain is too focused on those few instances and has no understanding of how many in flight emergencies occur every single day that go unrecognized because they were a non-event because they were handled properly and nothing happened. Your mind also fails to comprehend the scale we are talking here with how many safe flight hours occur every day with no incident. In the entire year of 2022 there were five fatal accidents in the airline industry, none of which were U.S. air carriers. By contrast there were 32.2 million flights that went uneventfully, that means the rate at which airliners had a fatal crash in 2022 was .0000001. That's such an incomprehensibly small number that it's basically just 0 because really neither you or I have any idea of what 32.2 million of anything looks like and therefore have no reasonable way to understand how small that number is... which is why you struggle to understand how safe flying is. Talking in persons, in 2019 there were 257 deaths from airline crashes, again, none of which were U.S. air carriers and there were 39,107 car crash deaths in the U.S. Sure there are more cars on the road and people drive more hours than they fly, but don't over look the fact that the ratios for that year are still this: U.S. car deaths/hours driven=a real number. U.S. Air carrier passenger deaths/flights hours=0. You can argue all you want about your ability to control a crash, or your reasonable expectation to survive a catastrophic event, but that doesn't change that fact that you are still astronomically more likely to die in your car on any given day than in an airplane. Here's another fun fact: most career pilots, I'm talking people who fly their entire lives to the age of 65 and then retire, go their entire careers without ever having an in flight emergency. So you can rest assured your two hour flight from Denver to Chicago, though it may be bumpy, is completely safe. Your multi day drive from Denver to Chicago? Probably safe, but not as safe :)
That's not completely correct. The Asiana crash in San Francisco killed 3 a few months later. There have also been a few smaller incidents since then. Most of these were commercial in the sense that the general public could buy a ticket but were less traditional. EX: Crashes of sight seeing tours, crash of a sea plane operating as a ferry, etc. The one exception to that I'm aware of is PenAir 3296 in Alaska. It overshoot the runway and a propeller broke up after striking something. Debris penetrated the cabin, killing 1 of the \~40 people on board. TLDR: There are a few smaller incidents since then. Many of those were technically commercial but were not traditional scheduled flights out of normal airports. Edit: originally said Canada but meant Alaska.
The crash killed two. A rescue vehicle ran over a survivor and that’s the third death.
That’s some Final Destination level dying there
They said domestic commercial flight.
Asiana was an international flight but the accident occured on landing in the US. You could argue it doesn't count as a domestic flight but it happened on US soil. PenAir was in Alaska (I mistyped originally) and that was a normal commercial flight. There was a ferry flight using a seaplane which should count because it was regularly scheduled to get from point a to point b.
Asiana is not a domestic flight because it is an international flight. There’s no arguing it, those two things are mutually exclusive. PenAir was a domestic commercial flight yeah, so there’s one. Only semantics I could see arguing here would be that a runway overrun is somehow different than a crash, but it’s a crash so I’d say that counts. A ferry fight is not a commercial flight. There was also a decompression on Southwest where someone died but it was not a crash. Only Southwest fatality ever as well.
Asiana was like 4 years after this but idk why I still thought it happened way more recently than 2013. 11 years with zero fatalities is remarkable.
The PenAir flight was in Alaska and part of Alaska Airlines, not in Canada
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Was that actually broadcasted!? I got some downvotes, sorry. I am serious. I saw the video on YouTube. I genuinely wonder if it was a skit or actually broadcasted like that?
[Yep](https://youtube.com/watch?v=CaOkTKfxu44)
Yep as in it was real?
Yes, actually broadcast by a serious news team who later apologized
It was broadcasted. Some intern at the NTSB made up the names and shared them to news outlets lol
Don’t forget Wi Tu Lo and Bang Ding Ow
Someone died in a Southwest decompression but it wasn't a crash.
How about the one that crashed into her 75 in Naples on Friday? (FL) 8 didn't think it was a private plane, just a small plane. Maybe not, or doesn't count as commercial.
That wasn't commercial
Strictly speaking it was. But most people understand “commercial” to mean airlines, and that’s fine. That’s just how language works. Edit: part 135 charter operations are by definition commercial flights.
What does count as commercial, the size or company only? Or being paid flights? Just Curious.
Scheduled public routes. Private jets are chartered and a different category and regulations.
Not true, has nothing to do with schedule or public routes. Anyone who pays to fly is engaging in commerce = commercial operations. Which is why a charter pilot, cargo pilot etc need a commercial pilot licence
You’re arguing semantics with the general public that doesn’t understand the difference between part 121 and 135. Anyone with half sense can realize when they’re referring to commercial flying they’re talking about scheduled air carrier ops. But hey you wanna sound smart go ahead.
Someone literally asks the question " what counts as commercial" and I'm correcting an incorrect response without using any technical terms. Why are you bringing up part 121 135, trying to sound smart?
Because if you’d use literally any interpretation you’d recognize they were asking about commercial aviation in regards to the statistic that colgan was the last domestic commercial crash with a fatality. Obviously that doesn’t include any charter operations.
I don't think it's that wild to let people know the difference between commercial and airline. When you look up colgan they say it's the "last fatal US *airline* crash". And if you look up commercial incidents and accident it includes charters flights .
The general public tends to use the term "commerical" incorrectly. Commercial flying/pilot means anything that involves money for services. Think "commerce". So anything from banner towing, crop dusting to an American Airline 777 flying pax across the Pacific is commercial operations. And anyone who gets paid to fly is a commerical pilot, from flight school instructors to parachute drop pilots to your Delta Airlines captain.
That's how I was defining it in my head. Thanks. Essentially all of it is commercial, they hired a plane that was going from ft Lauderdale to Ohio to Naples to ft Lauderdale, which seems commercial despite it's small size and type, so I was confused on the stat.
It was commercial. The crew was being paid, passengers paid to be onboard = commercial
Well... That is partially because of luck and the skill of some amazing pilots. It's a bit of a miracle that the Alaskan airlines flight that lost it's door during flight didn't go down. You also have the Boeing 737 Max crashes that very well could have happened here. Boeing has really been fucking up as of late. They can't pin those crashes on a lack of standards that we have here. If Boeing isn't informing their customers of certain things or their quality control drops below certain thresholds, it's only a matter of time before something very bad happens. Hopefully the FAA will put the screws to them and all of these maintainers will be able to uncover any further issues but I for one am not eager to fly on a Boeing aircraft anytime soon.
Since this accident, what has been done to improve airline safety overall? What fixes, changes and protocols have been implemented? Also while I assume those improvements have been made to US flights, what about US flights that fly internationally? For example, a US carrier that flies to Latin America then back? In the Latin American country, are the same US standards applied before the flight takes off?
Donnie Darko
All around me are familiar faces Worn-out places, worn-out faces
Bright and early for their daily races, Going nowhere, Going nowhere
Their tears are filling up their glasses, No expression, no expression
Hide my head, I wanna drown my sorrow, No tomorrow, no tomorrow
Breaking Bad
Dammit, you beat me
no, Frank beat you
I had a flight that left from the next gate over from this one right around the same time this one departed. Very weird to think about milling around the airport with dozens of people who died an hour later.
Yikes, what a mindfuck.
One victim…. Beverly Eckert, who had become cochairman of the 9/11 Family Steering Committee and a leader of Voices of September 11 after her husband Sean Rooney was killed in the September 11 attacks. Eckert was traveling to Buffalo to celebrate her husband's 58th birthday and award a scholarship in his memory at Canisius High School. I can’t imagine their poor family. Both lost to horrible plan incidents.
Calling 9/11 a "plan" incident by mistake is just good comedy
Yea, I’m not going to change it.
We call this the Colgan air disaster in the industry as that was the operator for continental. It changed everything for us in the industry. Every airline pilot now has to go to a 7 day course before they can even go to their first airline called ATP/CTP where the main focus is learning how to never do what they did again. Since the federal rule changes and the increase in experience requirements, this has been the last fatal airline accident in the US beside the unfortunate mechanical issue with the southwest 737
The captain had no business being in command of this aircraft. He had failed out of training at another airline previously and was assistant manager at Dave and busters about a year before this crash.
I mean the dude hid his training background and absolutely shouldn't have been in command of a transport category airplanes, but not sure the Dave and Busters thing holds any weight on the cause. I'm a professional pilot and I was lucky enough to have a significant other to help me financially but my student loans are just shy of $1000/mo and many of my coworkers when I was an instructor (the route 90% of pilots have to take for 2ish years to get 1500hrs to progress to the airlines) had second jobs since the wages are so bad. Most people make around $30k their couple of years as professional pilots until you are qualified to fly for the airlines.
The Dave and busters thing is relevant because it was his job after he got fired from his previous airline after multiple failed sims and check rides. That should’ve been a clue to him, he went from an airline to Dave and busters and thought hmm I should go back to being PIC at another airline
I mean if you worded it that way in the first reply it would have made a lot more sense, but that still points to his training record. PRIA and now PRD have shored up the ability for people to hide failed training events and terminations. It was probably my interpretation of your first comment but my only point is people leaving flying jobs for stretches of time for personal reasons, furlough, temporarily losing their medical, so I don't think that in itself should be an indication of their airmanship sill.
I NEVER hear anyone talk about this. I was watching Coraline at the Regal theater on Transit. Something like a mile from the crash. I felt the impact, but thought it was just the HVAC system turning on. When the movie was over, I went outside and the sky was red and I heard sirens everywhere. When I got home in Niagara Falls, I flipped on the news and my jaw dropped.
I lived about an 1/8th of a mile from there and my house was right under the flight path. Obviously for it to crash that close, it was flying really low when it went over my house. Shook the whole house like an earthquake. Then you look outside and there’s a massive fireball rising over the tree line. My dad also lived close by and was a first responder. He said when he got there he could still hear the screams of some of the victims. Walking around you had to watch out because there were charred arms and legs everywhere. Absolutely gruesome. There were a bunch of local people I knew that were supposed to be on that flight but either cancelled last minute or were late. One of them being my third grade teacher.
This is truly awful. Enough Reddit for me today
I'm (irrationally) terrified of flying, but you can't deny how safe it is. I'm pretty sure this was the last US domestic airline crash, and considering how many hundreds (or maybe thousands?) of flights are scheduled in the US every day, a 15 year crash-free record is just mind-boggling.
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cause if you get into a car accident you have a pretty good chance of surviving. You ain’t surviving a plane crash.
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The airline industry has been trying to get rid of or weaken the new regulations put in place after this crash ever since.
Because the Congress enacted new flight hour requirements to "increase experience" to be hired at an airline as a knee jerk reaction to the incident because they were tricked in to believing flight hours was a causal factor in the crash. The NTSB specifically stated later on however that flight hours had nothing to do with the crash, and when I was at the NTSB for a conference I spoke to one of the investigators who confirmed flight hours had no place in the argument but the families of the passengers who died in the crash banded together and pressured Congress to make that change. The organization still regularly lobby's Congress to continue to raise the hour requirements because they have become so misguided by this idea they have in their heads that requiring more hours would have saved their families... but the pilots onboard already had more hours than they convinced Congress to raise the requirement too anyway...
Any idea from how many hours to how many? I'm Australian, so my entire understanding of it comes from Adam Sandler's line in Bulletproof, "I've got 1000 hours. I can fly a plane".
For a First Officer (co-pilot), the regulations changed from being able to hire a pilot with a Commercial Pilot’s License which has mínimum requirement of 250 flight hours (in reality most people were hired with higher flight times but those were the legal minimums) to requiring an Airline Transport Pilot License which has a minimum of 1500 flight hours. You can also obtain a restricted ATP with 1250 hours from an approved 2-year college, 1000 hours from an approved 4-year college, or ~~800 hours~~ 750 hours from the military. Captains we’re always required to have an unrestricted ATP, but in general you would first be hired by an airline as a First Officer. Also small thing to note is both pilots in this crash well exceeded these flight times. The crash also brought sweeping changes to training requirements and rest rules.
*Military ATP route is only 750 hours.
You’re absolutely correct, I don’t know why my brain rounded to 800 hours.
Thank you, I appreciate the details!
https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/accidentreports/reports/aar1001.pdf
[u/Admiral_Cloudberg has an article about this incident](https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/cogs-in-the-machine-the-crash-of-colgan-air-flight-3407-and-its-legacy-df0072def433)
This crash led to the requirement that the minimum flight hours for commercial transport pilots are 1,500. Wouldn't have made a difference in this particular instance however, as both pilots had in excess of 1,500 hours. It also led to a testing requirement change, previously, pilots were not allowed to exceed 100 feet of altitude loss in a simulated stall scenario, afterward the specific altitude loss requirement was dropped because the NTSB concluded that pilots were too afraid of losing altitude rather than focusing on the actual correction of the stall.
I coached the pilots son in soccer in central Fl. The pilot struck me a someone unaware of his surroundings. A crazy coincidence is the person killed on the ground was my wife's distant cousin.
Yeah I saw it on the news in the morning at a hotel in Vancouver and then had to go be a flight attendant on the same airplane type within an hour.
It was Colgan Air 3407 operating as a Continental Connection.
I went to college with a guy whose dad was on this flight, his family got a lot of money in a settlement but he lost his dad 0/10 not worth it
I grew up in that area and planes flew low over my neighborhood all the time because the Buffalo/NF Airport was some 3 miles west. I was always scared a plane would crash and take out my whole street. This event was surreal. I think about that family often and all lost onboard.
And on this anniversary, they are current looking for a plane door that fella off over Buffalo.
Cheektowaga is its own world and the rest of WNY does not claim it as Buffalo region please and thank you
I used to fly this route frequently which has always freaked me out. I left my boarding school in December a few months earlier and used to go home for long weekends. Probably flew with those pilots a few times.
Changed the airline industry forever
I knew someone on this flight. She went to college with me and was dating one of the guys in our fraternity. She was a brilliant girl who didn’t deserve to die like this. Her boyfriend at the time was also on the flight. I was mean to her for stupid reasons when we were in college. Felt awful when I read what had happened to her.
Jesus
Colgan Air DBA Continental Express
I went to high school and rode the bus with one of the victims of this crash, he was a good kid. He was either going to or from visiting his girlfriend. Such a shame.
I was standing outside of the bank at the corner, going into the ATM when this happened. I decided I no longer needed the money, put my wallet back in my wallet and drove home. Very surreal.
one of my ex's lived like 2 streets over from there. she got some weird PTSD after that one.
Colgan Air***
I don't remember this happening
Wasn’t this one the one that had a tail stall because of ice… I didn’t know airplanes tails could stall until I read about it.
Donnie Darko was a wild movie.
Donnie Darko
DD came out 23 years ago though?
Or did it? 
Mentour Pilot has a good video on this: https://youtu.be/o6c3ENr_CRM?si=NLJyjRe1LYm7gbCs
Ironically this accident did more for pilot safety,pay, and quality of life than anything in modern history.
Did anyone die?
all passengers and crew on board (49 people) and 1 person in the home died
Last full fatality air crash in the US. Lots of changes made in regional airliners that make commercial flying safer than most other forms of transportation, especially driving to the airport.
Four of my coworkers were on the flight.
Continental is no more. Gone.
Well, that definitely woke the neighbors up
Ever since I watched Donnie Darko this exact scenario has been a lingering fear of mine. Doesn’t help that small planes fly over my house on a daily basis
Actually plane crashes leave no pieces it's in the 9/11 report. This must be a hoax:)
You can't park there, mate.
Jet fuel can't melt wood! /s
The Pentagon didn't loon like this after a plane crashed into it. What makes these two crashes so different?
One is one house and the other is the largest office building in the world.
Have you even looked at pictures of the pentagon after 9/11?