George S. May Business Blog

NTSB hearing reveals fatigue, inexperience, among reasons for the crash of Colgan Air flight 3407

During an investigative hearing, related to the events surrounding a fairly recent plane crash in upstate New York, testimony was revealed that fatigue may have contributed to the crew’s inability to save the plane. Apparently this is not much to the peculiar as the National Transportation Safety Board hearings this week revealed that lack of sleep could be happening quite frequently on a number of airlines. NTSB investigators said that many airline crews live far from their base of operations, causing them to come to work tired.

Today, Thursday, will wrap up the three day hearing on Capitol Hill. The NTSB said the hearing was to gather information and has not issued its report on the cause of the crash.

The investigation did find, however, that Colgan Air Captain Marvin Renslow, despite having close to a full day off prior to the ill-fated flight, had been seen sleeping in the Newport Airport crew lounge. (Sleeping in the lounge is against regulations.)

 ”The Colgan policy is that they’re not to sleep in the crew room, but it turns out they are sleeping in the crew room,” said NTSB board member Kitty Higgins.

Daniel Morgan, Colgan’s vice president for flight safety, explained, “People can come in between their flights to take a nap.”

The First Officer aboard the plane, Rebecca Shaw, gave the board reason to believe that she was tired, in that, although she had three days off before the flight, she commuted through the night from Seattle, catching rides on connecting Fed Ex flights to get to Newark, New Jersey, where the Colgan flight originated.

Kathy Johnson, a recent widow from the crash:

 ”It is shocking. It’s hard to believe that it is allowed to go on. I wonder how many pilots, first officers, do the same thing that we are not aware of.”

Mark Rosenker, NTSB acting chairman, implied that it may be time for airlines to toughen enforcement of their regulations:

“I am concerned about the winking and nodding I’ve seen in some of the polices of the company, your company, and crew members, and I don’t believe it’s only within your company,” Rosenker said.

The safety board’s preliminary investigation determined there was some ice accumulation on the Bombardier Dash 8-Q400 aircraft, but that “icing had a minimal impact on the stall speed of the airplane.”

To add a bit more fuel to the fire within surviving friends and relatives, who have been allowed to attend the hearings, further crew inadequacy was exposed yesterday when the court revealed that Renslow hid his background from Colgan by failing to reveal two pilot exam failures in his job application. It was also found that Renslow never trained on the “stick pusher” emergency system in a flight simulator. It was also found that the crew violated another rule that requires cockpit conversation to be focused on the flight.

As a reminder, Continental Connection Flight 3407 went down February 12 near Buffalo, New York, killing 49 on the plane and one man in the house that was hit.

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