Evidence Points To Crew Error In Buffalo Air Crash
WASHINGTON (AP) — An aviation expert says the commuter plane crash that killed 50 people near Buffalo, N.Y., last month is sounding more and more like a “human-factors” accident.
The National Transportation Safety Board says its investigation so far indicates icing was not the reason that Continental Connection Flight 3407 tumbled out of control and slammed onto a house.
Instead, the data recorder on the turbo-prop shows that when an automatic sensor warned of a stall condition, the pilot pulled back on the control yoke rather than pushing forward on it.
Safety science professor William Waldock of Embry Riddle Aeronautical University says pulling the plane’s nose up would be the wrong thing to do. Instead, he says, you’d want to do the exact opposite: push the nose down to increase airspeed and avoid a stall.
