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The Presidents' Day holiday saw two of the three network anchors take the day off and only one story rated as newsworthy enough to warrant coverage on all three newscasts. Thus the Story of the Day was the continuing investigation into Thursday's crash of Continental Airlines' Connection Flight 3407 in suburban Buffalo. CBS and NBC both led from the crash site where bereaved kin were granted access to mourn the 50 dead. ABC chose to lead with the continuing recession. As for substitute anchors, both ABC and CBS used their morning programs as their bench. CBS chose Harry Smith of the Early Show; ABC went with Good Morning America's Diane Sawyer.

All three correspondents described the stomach churning final 26 seconds of the Continental turboprop's flight before it crashed into a house. CBS' Jeff Glor described how the plane "suddenly began to gyrate wildly like a rollercoaster," falling 800 feet in just five seconds according to radar. ABC's Lisa Stark (no link) reported that the crew had been using autopilot until a warning went off in the cockpit about imminent stalling. "The airline does recommend pilots fly by hand in severe icing to better feel how the plane is handling," she noted, without addressing whether the ice that night was normal or severe. NBC's Tom Costello looked into the crew's experience: Marvin Renslow, previously a Saab pilot, had only been certified to fly the Bombardier Dash 8 Q400 in December, logging just 110 hours since then; Rebecca Shaw, his 24-year-old co-pilot, "had seven times more flight time in the Dash 8 than the captain."


Andrew Tyndall 2/18/09 9:28:51 pm

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