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The domestic airline industry's two-and-a-half-year safety streak that was so memorably kept alive last month in the icy waters of the Hudson River came to a fiery end in suburban Buffalo. A Continental Airlines commuter plane fell out of the sky Thursday night as it prepared to land at Buffalo Niagara Airport. All 49 on board were killed as it nosedived into a house and burst into flames; a man who lived in that unlucky house was the 50th death. The crash of Continental Flight 3407 was Story of the Day, accounting for 51% of the three-network newshole (29 mins out of 57) as all three newscasts led from upstate New York. CBS was anchored by substitute Maggie Rodriguez.

ABC's Lisa Stark painted the word picture: "The turboprop plunged from the sky, tearing through a house and exploding, its fuel igniting into a massive fireball. Flames reached 50 feet into the air." NBC's Peter Alexander talked to eyewitnesses: "The fire and smoke were blinding, the wreckage only twisted metal." A second shift at the local hospital was ordered to stay late to care for survivors. A nurse told him: "There were no souls to bring in and treat."

The turboprop plane, a Dash 8 Q400, was manufactured in Canada by Bombardier and operated for Continental by Colgan Air. NBC's Tom Costello said Dash 8 is "very well known. They were first manufactured back in 1984. It is a workhorse plane, very reliable." According to the flight recorder, CBS' Jeff Glor told us, the plane began to "pitch and roll wildly" shortly after the crew was heard talking about "significant ice build-up" on the leading edge of the wing. Yet CBS' Nancy Cordes noted that the plane came equipped with "heated propellers to melt the ice and inflatable devices, or boots, on the front edges of the wings to knock ice off." The flight data recorder indicated that de-icing equipment had been turned on. "The big question now is: were they working?"

ABC's in-house aviation consultant John Nance explained the aerodynamics for anchor Charles Gibson. The plane crashed immediately after the crew put down its landing gear and extended its flaps as it prepared to land. The gear and the flaps would slow the plane, probably below "critical air speed" forcing it to stall. If ice had built up on the wing it would "redesign" it, making "a 100 knot wing, one that can fly at 100 knots, all of a sudden unable to fly at slower than maybe 120…This is one of the seductive parts of it. You may not know that you have got that type of situation until you slow too far and then all of a sudden you depart normal flight."

Depart normal flight is such a decorous euphemism.


Andrew Tyndall 2/14/09 10:30:00 pm

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