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Post by dgriffin on Feb 13, 2009 9:22:10 GMT -5
CLARENCE, N.Y. A sputtering commuter plane slammed into a suburban Buffalo home in a fiery explosion that killed all 48 people on board and one person on the ground, authorities said.
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Post by dgriffin on Feb 13, 2009 10:36:34 GMT -5
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Post by dgriffin on Feb 13, 2009 10:50:55 GMT -5
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Post by dgriffin on Feb 13, 2009 17:54:41 GMT -5
Looks like it may have been ice that downed the plane. NTSB investigators recovered and are analyzing data on the black box and listening to crew conversations on the Cockpit Voice Recorder.
" ... the aircraft's cockpit voice recorder captured the crew discussing landing the aircraft at Buffalo. They noted snow and mist in their vicinity. At an altitude of 16,000 feet they noticed conditions were becoming hazy and asked for permission to descend to 12,000 feet. The crew subsequently discussed "significant ice build-up" on the windshield and wings on the aircraft, Mr Chealander said. One minute before the end of the recording, the plane's landing gear was put down. Twenty seconds later the crew repositioned the aircraft's wing flaps to slow it for landing. Within seconds of the flaps being moved, the aircraft experienced a "series of severe pitches and rolls", Mr Chealander said. Just before the recording ended, the crew tried to raise the landing gear and reposition the flaps, he added." news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7889764.stm
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Post by concerned on Feb 13, 2009 18:56:37 GMT -5
how sad
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Post by concerned on Feb 13, 2009 18:58:04 GMT -5
but can you imagine being alive when the Twin Towers was colapsing upon itself.
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Post by dgriffin on Feb 13, 2009 19:31:39 GMT -5
A British Airways plane crashed at London today when it's front wheel undercarriage collapsed. Luckily, no one was hurt. I did a bit of snooping on the web and found that the plane was a BAE RJ100, the landing gear made by Messier-Dowty, a French firm that provides the same tricycle arrangement to Bombardier, the maker of the Dash 8 that crashed in Buffalo. The Dash 8 has not had any previous fatal mishaps, but has had a rash of accidents due to landing gear failure.
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Post by dgriffin on Feb 13, 2009 19:40:30 GMT -5
but can you imagine being alive when the Twin Towers was colapsing upon itself. No, but I was in a plane that crashed because of ice. Luckily (obviously), I was one of the survivors. Anyone who flies on a feeder airline is crazy in my book. Their safety records are far worse than those of the major airlines. The information released so far indicates what I would think was pilot error. He set the flaps and dropped the landing gear and the plane fell out of the sky. They knew they had significant ice on the aircraft. |
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Post by bobbbiez on Feb 13, 2009 20:24:49 GMT -5
 Dave, I agree with you on this. Heard on the news that a witness did see ice on the wings before take off. I feel so bad for all the families concerned. Especially feel heart broken for the family whose family member was on this plane and was the wife of a man who was killed in 911. How tragic for one family to endure losing both in a similar situation.  My sympathy goes out to all involved.
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Post by dgriffin on Feb 16, 2009 11:12:21 GMT -5
 Two carriers stopped flights of prop planes in cold weather Safety expert raps FAA for minimizing icing risks www.buffalonews.com/home/story/579988.html?imw=YWASHINGTON — Two airlines stopped flying turboprop planes in icy climates after deadly crashes similar to the one that claimed 50 lives Thursday in Clarence — and the nation’s former top transportation safety official said the lessons of such earlier crashes should have prevented last week’s tragedy. Both American Eagle and Comair ended their cold-weather use of turboprop planes at least partly out of safety concerns. But Colgan Air, the subcontractor that runs Continental Airlines commuter flights like the one that crashed in Clarence, still flies turboprops in February from Newark to Buffalo. “What made this crash more than tragic was that it was foreseeable and likely preventable if not for the preference of profit over safety in some of the aviation industry and for the lax oversight of the Federal Aviation Administration in its failure to adequately address known safety risks related to icing,” (former NTSB Chairman Jim) Hall said.American Eagle officials could not be reached to comment, but the National Transportation Safety Board’s report on that accident says the plane, en route from Indianapolis to Chicago, lost control because of ice accumulation. The ATR 72-210 turboprop was not equipped to handle icing and plummeted to the ground in Roselawn, Ind. “The airplane was susceptible to this loss of control, and the crew was unable to recover,” the board’s report concluded. As for Comair, that airline abandoned turboprops entirely after a Jan. 9, 1997, flight from Cincinnati to Detroit nose-dived 18 miles short of the runway, killing all 29 people aboard. Turbo props are cheaper to fly. It may be that Colgan continues to fly them because of profits. |
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Post by bobbbiez on Feb 16, 2009 14:39:54 GMT -5
Besides the ice build up, they also said on CNN this morn that the plane was put on auto/pilot which should not have been done in this most serious situation. 
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Post by dgriffin on Feb 16, 2009 15:04:02 GMT -5
Besides the ice build up, they also said on CNN this morn that the plane was put on auto/pilot which should not have been done in this most serious situation. Yes, and that's an interesting point. On autopilot, the pilot doesn't get the feel of the aircraft and can't sense changes occurring as they begin to effect the handling of the plane due to ice. The NTSB and the FAA disagree on whether the pilot should take back control during icing. The NTSB says he or she should for the reasons just mentioned, the FAA says he has enough to do during icing and should use autopilot to help handle the load so he doesn't screw up. But both of those recommendations are for "severe icing," I've read. Since it's not known yet if the icing was "severe" for this particular flight, the experts can't say at this point whether the pilot made a mistake. |
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Post by bobbbiez on Feb 16, 2009 15:18:50 GMT -5
Just from the way they're talking so far on the news, it is pointing to the pilot being at fault.  To bad they didn't have Sully flying that plane to. The outcome might have been different with his experience.
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Post by dgriffin on Mar 25, 2009 15:05:34 GMT -5
ABC NEWS Ice Ruled Out as Culprit In Feb. Plane CrashStill Hunting for Clues, NTSB Says Icing Had 'Minimal Impact' on Buffalo TragedyMarch 25, 2009 Investigators examining multiple plane crashes this year have their hands full, but today they announced progress toward learning what caused last month's fatal plane crash near Buffalo, N.Y. The National Transportation Safety Board said that ice was likely not the cause of the Feb. 12 crash, despite early media reports identifying ice as a potential culprit. The NTSB said that while there was some ice present, "the airplane continued to respond as expected to flight control inputs throughout the accident flight." The safety board added that "Preliminary airplane performance modeling and simulation efforts indicate that icing had a minimal impact on the stall speed of the airplane." A source close to the investigation said information from the flight data recorder indicated that the pilot's control column, essentially the device used to steer the plane, moved sharply backward, pitching the nose of the turboprop upward. Investigators said they were surprised a pilot would take that action and wanted to make sure there wasn't some other explanation for the movement of the plane's controls. "If you think you're stalling, you don't pull, you push," ABC News' aviation consultant John Nance said in mid-February. www.abcnews.go.com/Travel/story?id=7169084&page=1
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Dave, I agree with you on this. 
