Crashed: February 12, 2009, in Clarence Center near Buffalo, New York

The pilot had flown from Florida to Newark to captain the flight. The co-pilot had jumpseated on an overnight flight from her home in Seattle, Washington, flying across the country with, as National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) officials speculated, little to no sleep. Colgan Air facilities in Newark, New Jersey, do not provide sleeping accommodations, and staying overnight at a hotel was just too costly for the 24-year-old co-pilot who made about $20,000 a year.

The NTSB hearings also revealed that the pilot had 110.7 hours of experience in the Dash 8 aircraft. Once in flight on that fateful evening on February 12, 2009, the inexperience of the co-pilot on the Newark-to-Buffalo flight also was revealed, despite the weather being typical for the Northeast at that time of year. The cockpit voice recorder that was recovered revealed some of her last words, “I’ve never seen icing conditions. I’ve never de-iced. I’ve never seen any. I’ve never experienced any of that.”

They, along with 47 others on the aircraft and one person on the ground, were killed when the Bombardier Dash 8-Q400 pitched up, rolled rapidly from one side to the other, then entered a steep descending turn and crashed into a house, killing a dad in the house as well.

Three months later, the NTSB held three days of public hearings on the worst aviation crash in the history of western New York. Twenty witnesses testified at the NTSB headquarters in Washington, D.C. Excruciating facts emerged for the families who lost loved ones in the crash as a nation mourned their deaths. The mistakes, oversights, careless, and poorly-designed and poorly-implemented systems were recounted about the crash at Clarence Center, New York.

As family members sat in the audience, the hearings revealed the story of a tragedy that could have been avoided: inexperienced, poorly trained and fatigued pilots; startling low pay and lack of company sleeping quarters that contributed to crew members habitually jump-seating on overnight cross-country commutes to get to their bases in time; lack of monitoring by the airlines to enforce duty time and rest regulations; failure to install previously-recommended low airspeed alerter systems that would give pilots greater aural and visual warning; failure to implement NTSB recommendations to disconnect the autopilot when flying in icing conditions on a de-ice-boot equipped airplane; erroneous tailplane stall recovery information in the flight manual; violations of the sterile cockpit rule when undivided attention was required during an approach to land in icing conditions; lack of enforcing industry-standard safety programs. The list goes on and on.

Although Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) officials had studied many of these issues over the past several years, they did not act. The airlines did not act. The “one level of safety” that the FAA claims to have established between regional and major air carriers clearly is not true. Colgan Air, its management, its airplanes and its pilots are a low-budget, entry-level operation compared to Continental Airlines, the major airline whose livery is deceivingly painted on the side of the Colgan plane.

At the end of the hearings, the families who had attended packed up and returned home in tears, vowing to find out what really happened on that plane so that the necessary changes are made to make flying safer. Although knowing that it couldn’t help their loved ones, they did so in the spirit of helping others and so that the loss of their family member’s treasured life would not be in vain.

The Senate Aviation Subcommittee held hearings in June, 2009, as did a House Transportation Subcommittee. It will take many people to make things right.