Injured On An Airplane?

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By BEN DOBBIN

Associated Press Writer

Published by the Seattle Times

ROCHESTER, N.Y. —

A pilot’s inattention and failure to follow safety rules likely caused a commuter plane to plummet from the sky near Buffalo in February, killing 50 people, the airline told federal investigators.

The twin-engine turboprop also lacked an adequate system to warn the pilots when the plane was flying too slowly, contributing to the tragedy, said Colgan Air Inc.

“The probable cause of the accident was 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,” Colgan Air said in a Dec. 7 report to the National Transportation Safety Board.

The Air Line Pilots Association counters that a combination of factors other than pilot error caused the crash. In a report also sent to the safety board last week, the union argued that Colgan Air failed to adequately prepare the pilots for the wet, freezing conditions they faced on the night of Feb. 12.

The Manassas, Va., regional airline operated the flight for Continental Airlines Inc. and is facing lawsuits related to the crash.

Continental Connection Flight 3407 went into an aerodynamic stall and spun out of control as it approached Buffalo Niagara International Airport, slamming into a house and bursting into flame. All 49 aboard and one man in the house died.

The NTSB’s report on the crash is expected to be released by early February. Its investigation has spotlighted the long hours, low pay and long-distance commutes of regional airline pilots.

The agency exposed a series of critical errors by the turboprop’s captain, Marvin Renslow, and co-pilot Rebecca Shaw just before the crash.

It’s not clear where Renslow, of Lutz, Fla., slept the night before the accident, but it appears he may have tried to nap in a busy airport crew room where Colgan Air kept bright lights on to discourage extended sleeping. The first officer commuted overnight from her home near Seattle to Newark, N.J., to make the flight to Buffalo.

the rest here: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2010505522_apusplaneintohome.html?prmid=obinsite

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written by Jerry Zremski

In fact, pilots at Colgan Air, which ran Continental Connection Flight 3407, said they have flown sick or tired themselves … because it’s less painful than calling in sick or tired.

“I have done it myself because I was afraid of the hassles I’d get” for missing work, said a current Colgan pilot.

Similarly, pilots at Pinnacle Airlines — Colgan’s parent — have a hard time balancing the airline’s “unforgiving” attendance policy with their duty to be fit for flight, said Scott Erickson, head of Pinnacle’s pilots union.

“Sometimes, doing the right thing and missing work means being branded a poor employee,” Erickson said.

In interviews over the past month, those two pilots and six other pilots and former pilots at Colgan and Pinnacle offered a harshly different portrait of the airlines than did Philip H. Trenary, the Pinnacle president.

Pinnacle has a “nonpunitive” safety program, Trenary told the Senate Commerce Committee last month.

“If a pilot is fatigued for any reason, all they have to do is say so, and they’re excused from duty,” he told senators.

In the wake of Trenary’s comments, pilots at the airlines said calling in sick or exhausted has become easier since the February crash, which claimed 50 lives.

But they also said that for years before, management made sick calls and fatigue calls difficult, and potentially career-ending, experiences.

“I’m sitting here with a letter from the chief pilot saying that if I have seven occurrences of sick time, I could be fired. I don’t know how that’s not punitive,” said a Colgan pilot who, like seven of the eight pilots interviewed, asked that his name not be printed, saying he could be fired if identified.

Another Colgan pilot recalled the time when he fell ill and ended up undergoing surgery. Afterwards, while still in the hospital, his cell phone rang.

“The chief pilot called and started giving me a hard time,” the pilot said. “And I was just coming out of general anesthesia.”

Whether you’re sick or tired, Colgan managers “will harass you until you give up and fly,” said another Colgan pilot.

However, Joe F. Williams, the spokesman for Pinnacle and Colgan, disagrees.

“Our policies are in line with other carriers, both mainline and regional,” Williams said.

“Should we discover an instance in which a manager “harassed’ a pilot calling in fatigued, the manager would be counseled about the procedure for handling a fatigue call,” Williams added.

Contrary to what the company said, the pilots interviewed for this story said their experiences prove how tough it is to miss work at Colgan and Pinnacle. And they said that’s important because a federal probe into the crash of Flight 3407 has raised sickness and fatigue among pilots as key issues.

Shaw, the first officer, took a connecting red-eye flight from Seattle to Newark and then slept in the crew lounge at Newark International Airport before boarding Flight 3407. The transcript of the flight’s cockpit voice recorder shows Shaw sniffling and complaining of a cold.

“Oh, I’m ready to be in the hotel room,” she said before takeoff.

While it’s unclear where the pilot, Capt. Marvin Renslow, slept the night before the flight, the federal crash probe showed he logged onto the company computer system at 3:10 a.m. that morning and was seen in the crew lounge at the Newark airport about four hours later.

Flight 3407 left Newark for Buffalo at 9:18 p.m. that night. Less than an hour later, the crew allowed the plane to slow to the point where a stall warning activated.

Federal investigators said Renslow reacted improperly to the warning, pulling back on the yoke when he should have pushed it forward to gain speed.

“Even the worst pilot knows not to do that,” said Les Westbrooks, an associate professor of aeronautical science at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. “For him to have had that reaction, he had to be really fatigued.”

Yet the attendance policies at the airlines are so tough that pilots are reluctant to call in fatigued, according to the pilots interviewed by The Buffalo News … two from parent Pinnacle, four from Colgan and two who have left Colgan for other airlines.

“We have an attendance policy that is threatening in nature and disciplinary in action,” a Pinnacle pilot said. “We have pilots and flight attendants that fly sick all the time to avoid this disciplinary action.”

In addition to the pilot who got that phone call while in the hospital, another pilot complained of getting a call from the chief pilot while at a doctor’s office.

In both cases, the airline demanded a doctor’s note, which is standard operating procedure at Pinnacle and Colgan, according to several pilots.

“They treat you like a child,” still another former Colgan pilot said.

Williams, of Pinnacle, disagreed, saying: “No notes are requested for sick calls that fall within the policy … We use doctors notes for safety or absence abuse issues only.”

However, Pinnacle’s attendance policy says: “A physician’s certification of health (Doctor’s Note) whether being provided freely by the pilot or specifically requested by management normally acts as verification of his absence due to illness or injury.”

What’s more, several Colgan pilots recounted instances when they tried to call in sick only to get a call from management, urging that they reconsider.

The chief pilot sometimes counsels pilots to “work something out” with management over the sick call, said the pilot contacted at the doctor’s office.

“That means you don’t get paid for taking time off,” that pilot said.

Pilots at Colgan and Pinnacle have a strong incentive for doing that. Both airlines have policies that discipline employees with multiple occurrences of sick time each year (an “occurrence” can be one day long or several consecutive days long).

Those policies call for the dismissal of those who get sick seven times in a year.

Under those rules, about a third of Pinnacle’s pilots were reprimanded for having at least four occurrences of sick time in 2008, said Erickson, the union official.

Similar rules cover flight attendants. The pilot who got that call after surgery recalled an instance where Colgan tried to get a flight attendant to work even though she had a high fever.

Fearing that the rest of the crew and the passengers could get sick, the pilot of that flight refused to fly with her, at which point the airline called in a substitute for the attendant.

That pilot refused to fly with her because of Federal Aviation Administration regulations that require pilots to remove themselves from duty if flying “would not be consistent with the standard of safe operation.”

Several pilots noted that the Pinnacle/Colgan policy of threatening employees with dismissal for seven sick calls conflicts with that rule.

“It’s a company policy that could get you fired for following the law put forth by the FAA,” a Colgan pilot said.

Williams disagreed, calling that charge completely false.

“As I have stated, Colgan’s policy is nonpunitive and no jeopardy. Same with Pinnacle,” Williams said.

Nevertheless, pilots at the sister airlines can remember a time when the fatigue policy was clearly punitive.

“It was a battle calling in fatigued,” a former Colgan pilot said. “They would do anything they could to talk you out of it. They just want to get the plane moving.”

Current Colgan pilots said, though, that the fatigue policy has improved recently.

“It’s night and day since the crash,” said another Colgan pilot.

In wake of the Flight 3407 crash, the airline shifted responsibility for handling fatigue calls from the chief pilot to the Safety Department, which, pilots said, takes a much more reasonable approach to the issue.

And Williams said that change was about to be implemented at Pinnacle.

Pilots said Pinnacle’s fatigue policy has improved in another way as well. Pilots now must contact base management within 72 hours of a fatigue call, and no longer “get called on the carpet in front of the boss,” as they did before the policy change, Erickson said.

Despite the changes, Erickson still wonders if Pinnacle takes too harsh an approach on fatigue … given that only recently a Pinnacle pilot was, for the first time ever, reprimanded for calling in fatigued.

“It’s kind of bizarre to be reprimanded for doing your duty under FAA regulations,” said Erickson, who noted that the agency also requires pilots to pull themselves off duty when they are too tired to fly. The sick-time and fatigue policies at Colgan and Pinnacle are not unusual for the regional airlines that operate the less-traveled routes for major carriers, said Capt. Paul Rice, first vice president of the Air Line Pilots Association.

But they are bad policies because they leave sick and tired pilots thinking about the discipline they may face rather than about whether they are fit to fly, Rice said.

“Pilots should never be forced to make this decision on anything but safety,” he said.

Major airlines have much different policies on sick time and fatigue.

JetBlue gives beginning pilots 108 hours of paid time off every year and charges them five hours for each vacation day or the length of their shift for a sick day, the company said. Other airlines give pilots upwards of a month’s sick time every year.

That’s by no means not the only difference between regional airlines and the larger carriers.

Whereas pilots at the major airlines can earn in the six-figure range, Colgan said pilots on its largest plane are paid $67,000, although pilots said many of their colleagues make about $50,000. First officers, such as Shaw, can make less than $20,000.

Another Colgan pilot said the tough policies on sick leave and fatigue were the company’s way of dealing with low-paid, demoralized employees who might abuse more generous policies.

“I know where the company’s coming from … but they’re not paying qualified people the right amount of money to work for them,” the pilot said. “You expect a certain level of professionalism, but at $25,000 a year you’re going to get a certain level of professionalism in return.”

Meanwhile, those policies at Colgan and Pinnacle earned some criticism from Jerry M. Newman, a professor of business at the University at Buffalo who specializes in studying compensation and employee benefits.

“These look like policies from companies that have a difficult relationship with their employees,” Newman said.

Both Newman and Westbrooks, of Embry-Riddle, said the Colgan and Pinnacle sick policies are tougher than those at most companies.

And both lashed out at the economic trends in the airline industry that prompted big carriers like Continental to outsource many of their flights to lower-cost operations like Colgan.

“It’s a clever thing with potentially disastrous implications,” Newman said.

For proof, just look at Flight 3407, Westbrooks said.

“This whole accident was, unfortunately, about economics,” he added.

the rest here: http://www.buffalonews.com/101/story/786380.html

CNN said the carrier admits the flight’s crew did not respond correctly to warnings the Bombardier Dash 8-Q400 turboprop was going into an aerodynamic stall nor did it finish checklists or follow “sterile cockpit” rules that ban unnecessary conversation.

“Loss of situational awareness and failure to follow Colgan Air training and procedures” were what caused the crash, the company reportedly said, adding that Capt. Marvin Renslow — whom it was revealed after the crash had failed three pilot tests — “was not truthful (about the tests) on his employment application.”

CNN said that Colgan in the report rebutted critics who said low pay led crew members to live far from their home bases, contributing to fatigue, asserting that Renslow had 27 hours between flights.

© 2009 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2009/12/15/Colgan-Pilot-errors-led-to-plane-crash/UPI-89521260881715/

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Published by The New York Times

Written by Matthew L. Wald and Liz Robbins 

AMHERST, N.Y. — The crew of the plane that crashed near Buffalo on Thursday night discussed a “significant ice buildup” on the wings and windshield as the aircraft descended through light snow and mist, according to the flight data and voice recordings recovered from the scene of the accident that killed all 49 people on board and one person on the ground.

In a late afternoon news conference, Steven Chealander of the National Transportation Safety Board, who is acting as spokesman for the crash investigation, shared the chilling, technical details of the final minutes of Continental Flight 3407 as it prepared to land at Buffalo International Airport, which federal investigators gleaned from listening to the tapes on Friday.

In the final minute of the flight from Newark Liberty International Aiport, Mr. Chealander said the pilots apparently tried to abort the landing, but the plane violently pitched and rolled and seconds later crashed into a house in Clarence Center, N.Y., a Buffalo suburb six miles from the airport.

“The crew commented at 16,000 feet that they noticed it was rather hazy and requested to descend to 12,000 feet, and shortly after that request, they were cleared to 11,000,” he said. “Around that time, the crew discussed significant ice buildup, on the windshield and leading edge of the wings.”

He said that the de-icing system had already been in the on-position when the crew discussed the ice on the plane. The plane continued its descent, and the crew lowered the landing gear with a minute left on the tape.

Forty seconds later, the pilots extended the flaps, the moveable panels on the rear edge of the wings that allow a plane to maintain lift as it slows. But within seconds of extending the flaps, the plane experienced “severe pitch and roll excursions,” meaning that the nose pointed up and down and the wings wagged from side to side, said Mr. Chealander.

“After that,” he said, “the crew attempted to raise the gear and flaps just before the end of the recording.”

Mr. Chealander, a former airline captain, emphasized that the board was in a “fact-gathering stage” and would not analyze the data now. However, the sequence he described is consistent with previous crashes caused by icing.

There is no indication so far that the weather was unusual for Buffalo in February. Visibility around the airport was three miles, with snow and mist. “That’s icing conditions,” Mr. Chealander said.

The airplane, a Bombardier Dash 8 Q400 with two turboprop engines and room for 74 passengers, is certified for flight into “known icing conditions.” But when the pilots change the shape of the wings, by moving the flaps or other controls, sometimes buildups of ice that were not a factor in an earlier configuration are suddenly exposed to the passing wind and make the plane uncontrollable.

The flight data recorder was unusually comprehensive, measuring 250 different data points at frequent intervals, including use of the anti-icing system, but it did not record whether that system actually worked. On the Dash 8, a turboprop, the anti-icing system consists mostly of rubber, tire-like pneumantic “boots,” said Mr. Chealander. These “boots” inflate and shrink, breaking off accumulations of ice from the forward edges of the wings.

While investigators in Washington continued to comb through the tapes for causes of the crash, investigators on the ground were searching for clues from the aircraft and for remains of the victims.

Everyone aboard the plane — including 44 passengers, a crew of 4 and an off-duty airline employee — and one person in a house destroyed by the plane was killed, said Chris Collins, the Erie County executive.

Two others in the house, a 57-year-old woman and her 22-year-old daughter, suffered minor injuries and were taken to a nearby hospital, where they were treated and released, officials said.

Among those on the flight was Alison L. Forges, a historian and human rights advocate who documented the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and investigated related issues in Burundi and Democratic Republic of the Congo, according to Emma Daly, communications director of Human Rights Watch  in New York City.

Also on the flight was Beverly Eckert , the widow of Sean Rooney, a Buffalo native who died at the World Trade Center in the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Ms. Eckert was on her way to Buffalo for a weekend celebration of what would have been her husband’s 58th birthday, and had planned to take part in the presentation of a scholarship award at Canisius High School that she had established in his honor, The Buffalo News reported.

Ms. Eckert met President Obama last week at the White House, along with other relatives of people killed in the 2001 attacks or the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole.

Speaking at the White House late Friday morning, Mr. Obama said that Ms. Eckert “was an inspiration to me and to so many others, and I pray that her family finds peace and comfort in the hard days ahead.”Continental Airlines said the pilot of the flight, Continental Connection Flight 3407, was Capt. Marvin Renslow, 47, from Lutz, Fla.; the first officer was Rebecca Shaw; flight attendants were Matilda Quintero and Donna Prisco; and the off-duty employee traveling on the flight was Capt. Joseph Zuffoletto.

The flight was operated by Colgan Air under contract to Continental, and it has been using that type of plane since February 2008.

Among those on the flight was Maddy Loftus, 24, from Parsippany, N.J., who was traveling to a reunion of the women’s ice hockey team at Buffalo State College, said Jeff Ventura, the sports information director at the school. Ms. Loftus was the first girl on the Parsippany Hills High School boys’ ice hockey team, before playing forward for Buffalo State from 2002 to 2004, and then at St. Mary’s University in Minnesota.

Her father, Mike, flew for years as a pilot for Continental Airlines, according to several news reports.

Two members of Chuck Mangione’s band, Coleman Mellett, a guitarist, and Gerry Niewood, a saxaphonist, also were among the victims, according to the Associated Press.

In Buffalo, employees at the 600-person office of Northrop Grumman, a defense contractor, Jack Martin, a spokesman for the company, confirmed that four colleagfues had died in the crash, but he declined to release their names.

The death of Cantor Susan Wehle, from Temple Beth Am in Williamsville, N.Y, was confirmed by the Jewish Federation of Greater Buffalo. According to the Temple’s Web site, she had in 2006 recorded a CD of her work, “Songs of Hope and Healing.”

Clay Yarber, 62, a Vietnam veteran who had twice survived helicopter accidents during the war, also died in the crash.

“That is one of the bitter ironies of all this for us,” a former wife, Michele Keratsis, said in a telephone interview. She said that after his service in Vietnam, “he was not happy to get on a plane at anytime.”

At a command center where officials gathered after the accident, Chris Kausner told CNN that his sister, Ellyce Kausner, was on the flight. He said she was connecting from Jacksonville, Fla., where she was a law student. When a reporter asked Mr. Kausner how his family was taking the news, he said: “I heard my mother make a sound into the phone that I had never heard before. So, not good.”

An intense fire at the site of the crash, fueled by a natural gas leak, initially made it difficult for the investigators to retrieve the voice and data recorders, Mr. Chealander said. Fourteen investigators from the board are at work seeking the cause of the crash, he said at a news conference on Friday morning.

Tony Tatro, who lives near the crash site, told CNN that he was driving home when the plane passed about 75 feet overhead, with its nose pitched lower than normal and its wings tilted. The plane struck the ground moments later, he said.

The plane took off nearly two hours late from Newark Liberty Airport at 9:19 p.m. and crashed about 10:20 p.m. Eastern time, five minutes before it was due to land. David Bissonette, the emergency coordinator for the town of Clarence Center, told reporters around 4 a.m. that the plane had made “a direct hit” on the house at 6038 Long Street in Clarence Center.

“It’s remarkable that it only took one house,” he said. “It could have easily taken the whole neighborhood.”

Mr. Bissonette said the only piece of the plane that remained recognizable was the tail. The investigation, he said, would be “painstaking” because of the amount of damage to the plane and the house.

Mr. Collins said that about 12 nearby houses were evacuated after the crash and that a limited state of emergency had been declared.

Sandra Baker, who lives on Railroad Street, two blocks from the site of the crash on Thursday, said: “It was just like a huge great big crash, a boom.”

Both of her sons, volunteer firefighters, went to the scene.

“There was this banging sound” before the crash, she said. It was followed by a boom, then a dark cloud and flames and the smell of fuel and fire.

Another woman who lives nearby described the sound before the crash as “a loud roar over my house.”

“It was like the whole house shook,” said the woman, Jennifer Clark, who also lives on Railroad Street. “Then there was silence.”

Ms. Clark said she looked out of her window and saw a ball of flames rising into the sky.

She woke up her husband and said, “I think a plane just crashed.”

Colgan, the operator of the plane, also flies feeder routes for US Airways and United Airlines. Colgan’s Web site said the airline operates about 50 aircraft, including 15 of the Q400 model, and recently reached an agreement with Continental to add 15 more aircraft. Colgan, which has flown for Continental since 1997, is owned by Pinnacle Airlines Corporation, based in Memphis. Pinnacle has about 6,000 employees around North America, 1,800 of them in Memphis.

The last fatal crash involving a scheduled carrier in the United States was a ComAir regional jet in Lexington, Ky., in August 2006. The crew attempted to take off from a runway that was too short; 47 passengers and 2 of the 3 crew members were killed.

During the day on Thursday, Continental posted a notice on its Web site that its operations would be affected by the winter storm on the East Coast, including the Buffalo and New York City areas.

The storm caused delays of up to five hours on arrivals at Newark Liberty International Airport  on Thursday, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. That was unusual even for that airport, which routinely has some of the worst delays of any destination in the country.

Even by Friday, the F.A.A.’s Web site still showed delays at Newark of three hours and 50 minutes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/nyregion/13crash.html