Pilot errors cited in crash that killed 50 near Buffalo, N.Y.

WASHINGTON — The chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board said Tuesday the pilots of Continental Connection Flight 3407 that crashed near Buffalo, N.Y., nearly a year ago made mistakes that showed their “complacency and confusion that resulted in catastrophe.”

“History is repeating itself,” Deborah A.P. Hersman also told reporters. “There are things in this accident we’ve seen
before (because) they’re not being addressed by the aviation industry,
including the FAA.”

At the opening of the public session to deliberate
the probable cause and contributing factors that led to the death of 50
people in the accident, Hersman said safety issues raised by this
accident go beyond the mistakes that caused the crash.

She announced that a forum examining safety
implications of code-sharing arrangements in the aviation industry was
tentatively scheduled for this fall. A public forum on pilot and
controller professionalism already has been scheduled for this spring.

Investigators say although the pilot’s decision to
push the throttle forward for more power was insufficient, it was his
pulling back of the control column — opposite of what he should have
done — that stalled the plane.

Even then, investigators believe the pilots should
have been able to recover from any stalls if he had taken the correct
actions.

“That’s very unusual behavior and quite frankly, I’m at a loss to explain it,” said Tom Haueter, the director of NTSB’s Office of Aviation Safety.

The flight, operated by Logan Air for Continental Airlines, was en route from Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey when it crashed into a house in the northeast Buffalo suburb of Clarence Center, about 5 miles short of the runway at Buffalo Niagara International Airport.

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