The PBS Frontline Story "Flying Cheap" Airs Tonight

Tonight, the PBS show Frontline will air an airline safety oriented episode, "Flying Cheap," that focuses on the factors that led to the February 2009 crash of a Continental Connection airliner near Buffalo, NY. The flight was operated on behalf of Continental by Colgan Air, a regional carrier that flies routes under contract for US Airways, United and Continental.

This show provides a glimpse into the lives of regional airline pilots through interviews with former Colgan Air pilots. The overall argument of the show is that the rise of regional air carriers has benefited airline passengers by driving down prices, but at the possible cost of increasing safety risks.

Broadcast times will vary, so check out your local broadcast or cable listings. If you dont' have access to PBS, you can also visit this episode's web site out the PBS's web site for this episode. You can see an 11-minute excerpt from the show below:



Related Resources
AirSafe.com details on the Continental Connection crash
NTSB Conclusions on the causes of the Continental Connection crash
AirSafeNews.com article on how much money pilots make
LA Times story on overworked and underpaid pilots

NTSB Blames Crew in February 2009 Buffalo Crash

During a public meeting on February 2, 2010, the NTSB adopted a report on the February 12, 2009 crash of Continental Connection flight 3407 that determined that the captain inappropriately responded to the activation of the stick shaker, which led to a stall from which the airplane did not recover.

The aircraft was a Bombardier Dash 8 (N200WQ), and was flying as a Continental Connection aircraft, though it was operated by Colgan Air. On the night of February 12, 2009, it was on a scheduled flight from Newark, NJ to Buffalo, NY and crashed in a residential area about five miles (8km) from the airport. One house on the ground was destroyed. All 45 passengers and four crew members were killed, along with one person on the ground.

Their report stated that during approach, when the stick shaker activated to warn the flight crew of an impending aerodynamic stall, the captain should have responded to the warning by pushing forward on the control column. However, the captain inappropriately pulled aft on the control column and placed the airplane into an accelerated aerodynamic stall from which the crew could not recover. The NTSB also identified as probable causes the flight crew's communications procedures, the captain's ineffective management, and the airline's procedures for airspeed selection during approaches in icing conditions.

This investigation has generated substantial public interest over the past year in part because of issues, that may have contributed indirectly to this accident, including crew fatigue and the related issue of pilot pay. The captain commuted hundreds of miles and the first officer commuted from the other side of the country prior to reporting for duty, and the NTSB concluded that both pilots used an inappropriate facility during their last rest period before the accident flight. The NTSB also concluded that the pilots’ performance was likely impaired because of fatigue.

The synopsis of the accident investigation report is currently available, and the full report will be available in a few months. In the meantime, the public can review a wide variety of information, including the public docket, which contains testimony, exhibits, and other information used by the NTSB during the investigation.

AirSafe.com's Initial Report on this Accident
Audio: MP3 | Video: iPod/MP4 | WMV | Google Video | YouTube

NTSB Accident Animation
The following NTSB animation of the last few minutes of the flight shows excerpts from the flight data recorder (FDR), the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) transcript, recorded radar data, and aircraft performance data. The audio portion of the video is from air traffic control communications, and does not include audio from the cockpit.

Resources
Additional information about this event
Synopsis of NTSB accident investigation
NTSB press release on the accident report
NTSB public docket on the investigation
Colgan Air input to the NTSB investigation
Previous Continental crashes
Other Dash 8 events
Continental Airlines Wikipedia page
Continental Express Wikipedia page
Continental Connection Wikipedia page
Continental fleet
Continental Express fleet
Colgan Air fleet

AirSafe.com YouTube channel

Colgan Air Submits Report to NTSB About Its Fatal Crash in February 2009

The fatal 12 February crash of Colgan Air Flight 3407 is still under investigation by the NTSB, but last week, the airline submitted a report to the NTSB which blamed pilot actions as the probable cause of the accident. The Bombardier Dash 8 aircraft, which was operating as a scheduled Continental Connection flight from Newark, NJ to Buffalo, NY, crashed into a house about five miles from the airport during an instrument approach to runway 23. All four crew members and 45 passengers were killed, as well as one of the three people in the house.

The NTSB launched a major investigation, which is still ongoing. The NTSB's public docket of this investigation contains over 100 items, including a report submitted by Colgan earlier this month. That report identifies the probable cause of the accident as the flight crew’s loss of situational awareness and failure to follow Colgan Air training and procedures, which led to a loss of control of the aircraft.

According to Colgan, contributing to the accident was the flight crew’s failure to follow Colgan Air procedures and training, and the lack of adequate warning systems in the aircraft.

The investigation is not yet completed, and the final NTSB report may or may not reflect the analysis or conclusions of the Colgan report. AirSafeNews.com encourages you to review the Colgan report, and other items in the public docket, as well as following information from the NTSB and AirSafe.com

Colgan Air Crash Animation (no audio)

AirSafe.com's Initial Report on this Accident
Audio: MP3 | Video: iPod/MP4 | WMV | Google Video | YouTube

Resources
Additional accident details
Colgan Air Submission to the NTSB
Other NTSB public docket documents
Other AirSafe.com Videos
Fatal Continental plane crashes
Fatal Dash 8 plane crashes

How Much Does a Pilot Make?

Airline pilots are a highly trained and very closely regulated group of professionals who have the lives of their passengers and crew in their hands every time they fly. Both the flying public and professional pilots often wonder how much these professionals get paid for their expertise and experience.

For many airlines, especially those in the US, pilots negotiate with their airlines to determine how much flight crew members get paid. One web site, TalkAirline.com has put the pilot contracts and pay rates for many airlines in one convenient place. There you can find out that first year first officer at Colgan Air makes $21 per hour with a guaranteed minimum of $1,575 per month (about as much as an army private), while the most well-paid senior captain at Southwest makes $198 per hour with a guaranteed minimum of $15,444 per month (about as much as a four-star general).

The next time you fly, think about how much, or how little, the folks in the front of the plane are making.

Note: 2009 military pay data from the Defense Finance and Accounting Service.

NTSB Hearings on the Buffalo Plane Crash

On May 12th, 2009, the NTSB began a three-day public hearing about its ongoing investigation into the fatal February 2009 crash of a Continental Connection airliner in Buffalo, NY. Among the issues that came up were the possible roles of crew fatigue and crew training in the accident. During the last day of the hearing, noted aviation consultant Mike Boyd and I sat down with host Dave Berns of the "State of Nevada" program on KNPR radio in Las Vegas.

KNPR Interview on 14 May 2009 (15:21)

Additional Information
NTSB Public Docket on the Investigation
Accident Details from AirSafe.com
Todd Curtis book Understanding Aviation Safety Data

Risk, Safety, and the Plane Crash in Buffalo

Yesterday, the NTSB began its public hearings into the 12 February 2009 crash of a Continental Connection Dash 8 near Buffalo, NY. One of the issues that is of interest to the media is the safety of feeder airlines like Colgan Air which operated the Continental Connection accident aircraft. While the aircraft had "Continental" painted on the side, and may have a similar paint scheme as Continental, the fact is that the aircraft was not operated by Continental Airlines.

One common question that AirSafe.com gets about this situation is whether the feeder airline is just as safe. When I was contacted by the Wall Street Journal on the day the hearing again, in my quote that appeared in an article the paper the next day, my point was that safety is a subjective concept, and different people can have different ideas on whether an activity is safe or unsafe. I gave the example of skydiving. While sky divers believe the activity is safe, most other people would think that it was an excessively risky activity.

This brings out a more important point, that safety and risk are not the same concept and and not substitutes for one another. As explained in some detail on AirSafe.com, risk, typically an unwanted outcome combined with the likelihood of that outcome, is something that can be defined explicitly and be measured objectively. Given the same definitions and data, different people should come to the same conclusion about how much risk exists in a situation.

By comparison, safety, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder, and does not have to be associated with anything measurable. For example, the FAA requires that any US airline operating an airliner with the capacity for 10 or more passenger seats operate under the same set of regulations. However, an aircraft that is designed to seat 10 passengers will have FAA design requirements that are very different, and in some ways less strict, than the design requirements for an aircraft that can seat 300 passengers.

The different design requirements imply that different potential risks are dealt with in different ways depending on the size of the aircraft. These differences mean that the risks of flying on these two types of aircraft are not the same. However, the FAA allows both aircraft to operate under the same safety regulations.

Risk and safety questions can come up in other ways during an accident investigation. During the first day of the public hearings, it was revealed that shortly before the crash, a specific warning system was activated, but the crew apparently reacted to the warning in ways that made the situation worse and led to the aircraft departing from controlled flight.

Even more revealing were media reports that prior to the accident, Colgan pilots were no required by the airline to have hands-on simulator experience that would show them how to respond to this kind of warning. To the average passenger, allowing pilots to fly a plane without having adequate training in how to respond to critical warning systems is both unsafe and too risky. It will be months before the public finds out if the NTSB agrees.

Continental Connection Crash in Buffalo 12 February 2009

The aircraft, a scheduled flight from Newark, NJ and operated by Colgan Air, crashed in a residential area about five miles from the airport. At least one house on the ground was destroyed. All 44 passengers and four crew members were killed, along with one person on the ground.

AirSafe.com's Initial Report on this Accident
Audio: MP3 | Video: iPod/MP4 | WMV | Google Video | YouTube

Additional information about this event.
Plane crashes involving the Dash 8
Synopsis of NTSB accident investigation

For more videos, visit the AirSafe.com YouTube channel.