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There was no doubt about the Story of the Day. All three newscasts kicked off from the Washington DC bureaus with the headlines from the day's National Transportation Safety Board hearings into the commuter turboprop plane crash in February that killed 50 people in suburban Buffalo. We did not hear the cockpit conversation but the NTSB did release the transcript from pilot Marvin Renslow and his crewmate Rebecca Shaw. "Jesus Christ!" he exclaimed when he realized that he had responded wrongly to a warning that the plane was about to stall. As the plane plummeted into the ground, Shaw let out a dying scream.

CBS' Nancy Cordes characterized Renslow and Shaw as "deeply engaged in shoptalk." She pointed out that the conversation "violated a basic flight rule: no non-essential chatter below 10,000 ft--especially when flight conditions were poor." Those conditions included a build-up of ice on the wings that made Shaw think: "Oh my gosh! We are going to crash." Cordes commented that "five minutes later they did," although the stall, not the ice, was the cause. ABC's Lisa Stark summed up the NTSB inquiry as having revealed problems of "fatigue, pilot training and competence, cockpit behavior." She concluded that "these are not new concerns and this accident underscores that those longstanding issues may never have been addressed adequately." John Nance, ABC's in-house aviation consultant, reinforced Stark's point: "This is a training issue and it is a checking issue. It is an FAA issue."

The newscasts disagreed about which airline should take the negative public relations hit from being associated with such sloppy piloting. CBS kicked off Cordes' report with the Continental Connection logo. ABC identified the flight as Colgan Air Flight 3407 and did not mention Continental. NBC's Tom Costello called the flight "Colgan Air, which was flying as Continental Connection." He added, "by the way, Continental Airlines still uses Colgan for 173 daily Continental Connection flights."

CBS' punning Ben Tracy saw "the number of regional aircraft, smaller planes that are cheaper to fly, take off," a 42% increase since 2003. "Overall regional pilots have less experience and are paid much less than big jet pilots." The entire airline industry has lower levels of pilot experience than 40 years ago, he generalized. Back then 85% had a background flying military jets; now just 25% do. As for the turboprop airplane that Renslow was flying, ABC's consultant Nance was categorical: "The planes are definitely not less safe. We have got wonderful equipment compared to what we had 10 or 20 years ago."


Andrew Tyndall 5/14/09 3:35:54 pm

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