Colgan Air Flight 3407
Colgan Air Flight 3407 (marketed as Continental Connection Flight 3407) was a scheduled passenger flight from Newark, New Jersey, US to Buffalo, New York, US on February 12, 2009. Colgan Air staffed and maintained the aircraft used on the flight that was scheduled, marketed and sold by Continental Airlines under its Continental Connection brand. The aircraft, a Bombardier Q400, entered an aerodynamic stall from which it did not recover and crashed into a house at 6038 Long Street in Clarence Center, New York at 10:17 pm EST (03:17 UTC), killing all 49 passengers and crew on board, as well as one person inside the house.[2]
Accident
February 12, 2009
50
Colgan Air (operating as Continental Connection)
9L3407
CJC3407
COLGAN 3407
N200WQ
49
45
4
49
0
1
4
The National Transportation Safety Board conducted the accident investigation and published a final report on February 2, 2010 that identified the probable cause as the pilots' inappropriate response to stall warnings.[3][4][5]
Captain Marvin Renslow, 47, of Lutz, Florida was the pilot in command, and Rebecca Lynne Shaw, 24, of Maple Valley, Washington served as the first officer.
Families of the accident victims lobbied the U.S. Congress to enact more stringent regulations for regional carriers and to improve the scrutiny of safe operating procedures and the working conditions of pilots. The Airline Safety and Federal Aviation Administrative Extension Act of 2010 (Public Law 111–216) required some of these regulation changes.[6]
At that time of the crash, it was the deadliest aviation disaster involving the Bombardier Dash 8 Q400 until the crash of US-Bangla Airlines Flight 211 in 2018.[1]
A total of 50 people were killed: 49 passengers and crew and a resident of the house that was struck. Four injuries occurred on the ground, including two other people inside the home at the time of the crash. Among the dead were:
The FAA proposed or implemented several rule changes as a result of the Flight 3407 accident, including:
Congress appropriated $24 million to help facilitate creation of the PRD. But 11 years later, despite lobbying by a group of relatives of crash victims and another aviation accident in which a pilot concealed his training records,[69][70] the FAA had still not completed the PRD as directed by the NTSB. It was not until May 2021 that the FAA introduced the PRD.[71] The FAA's page about the PRD says:
In February 2019, to mark the 10th anniversary of the crash, ceremonies were held in Buffalo and the surrounding area in remembrance of the victims.[73][74]
In popular culture[edit]
The Cineflix/National Geographic series Mayday featured the incident in the fourth episode of season 10, titled "Dead Tired".[75] The dramatization was broadcast with the title "Stalled in the Sky" in the United Kingdom.
The flight was also included in a Mayday: The Accident Files Season 2 special titled "Rookie Errors",[76] which looked at the role of inexperienced pilots in aviation disasters. The episode reused the same dramatization as had the Mayday episode.
This article incorporates from websites or documents of the National Transportation Safety Board.
public domain material
Media related to Colgan Air Flight 3407 at Wikimedia Commons