Neoandrew1
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« on: February 13, 2009, 05:41:56 PM » |
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CLARENCE, N.Y. (Feb. 13) — A commuter plane dropped out of the sky without warning and nose-dived into a suburban Buffalo house in a fiery crash that killed all 49 people aboard and one person in the home. It was the nation's first deadly crash of a commercial airliner in 2 1/2 years.
Flames rise from the wreckage of a commuter plane that crashed Thursday in Clarence Center, N.Y., a suburb of Buffalo. The Continental flight was carrying 49 people, all of whom died. A person on the ground also died.
The cause of the disaster was under investigation, but other pilots were overheard around the same time complaining of ice building up on their wings — a hazard that has caused major crashes in the past.
The twin turboprop aircraft — Continental Connection Flight 3407 from Newark, N.J. — was coming in for a landing when it went down in light snow and fog around 10:20 p.m. Thursday about five miles short of the Buffalo Niagara International Airport.
Witnesses heard the plane sputtering before it plunged squarely through the roof of the house, its tail section visible through flames shooting at least 50 feet high.
"The whole sky was lit up orange," said Bob Dworak, who lives less than a mile away. "All the sudden, there was a big bang, and the house shook."
Two others in the house escaped with minor injuries. The plane was carrying a four-member crew and an off-duty pilot. Among the 44 passengers killed was a woman whose husband died in the World Trade Center attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Federal investigators searched through the wreckage of the plane and demolished house for the black box recorders that could shed light on what went wrong, but they said the smoldering debris was still too hot to look for bodies.
No mayday call came from the pilot before the crash, according to a recording of air traffic control's radio messages captured by the Web site LiveATC.net. Neither the controller nor the pilot showed concern that anything was out of the ordinary as the airplane was asked to fly at 2,300 feet.
A minute later, the controller tried to contact the plane but heard no response. After a pause, he tried to contact the plane again.
Eventually he told an unidentified listener to contact authorities on the ground in the Clarence area.
Erie County Emergency Coordinator David Bissonette said it appeared the plane "dove directly on top of the house."
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"It was a direct hit," Bissonette said. "It's remarkable that it only took one house. As devastating as that is, it could have wiped out the entire neighborhood."
The 74-seat Q400 Bombardier aircraft in Thursday's disaster was operated by Colgan Air, based in Manassas, Va. Colgan's parent company, Pinnacle Airlines of Memphis, Tenn., said the plane was new and had a clean safety record.
The nearly vertical drop of the plane suggests a sudden loss of control, said William Voss, a former official of the Federal Aviation Administration and current president of the Flight Safety Foundation, a nonprofit advocacy group.
Voss suggested that icing or a mechanical failure, such as wing flaps deploying asymmetrically or the two engines putting out different thrust, might have caused the crash, he said.
After the crash, at least two pilots were heard on air traffic control messages saying they had been picking up ice on their wings. "We've been getting ice since 20 miles south of the airport," one said.
well this is worrying because I fly to the UK a lot and right now its not exactly sunny weather there either so I may have to start questioning when and were I fly too.
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