Did a stupid, inexplicable mistake cause the crash near Buffalo, N.Y.?
Plus: The weird hell of working for a regional airline. By Patrick Smith Apr. 03, 2009 | The latest news on February’s fatal crash of a regional airline turboprop outside Buffalo, N.Y., is both fascinating and disturbing. Icing, it turns out, was not the central factor in the fate of Colgan Air (Continental Connection) Flight 3407. Investigators are focused instead on what appears to be an egregious case of pilot error. According to a report released on March 25, data from the plane’s digital flight recorder reveals that the captain responded incorrectly — inexplicably, some would say — to the warning of an incipient stall. This gets technical, but try to hang with me. (For more on the nitty-gritty of icing and stalls, see my previous columns here and here.) The plane, a Dash-8 Q400 (the actual aircraft involved in the accident, N200WQ, is seen here last October), was on its final approach. For reasons unknown it was flying slightly slower than it should have been. This, together wit
