Well, as most everyone in the US has heard by now, we lost one of our flights a few days ago. Continental 3407 went down in icing conditions around buffalo, New York. The thing that kinda made me perk up was the mention of wing icing possibly being the cause of the crash. I thought, "Wow, this seems really freaking familiar", and sure enough I was right. Wayyyyyy back in 1994, American Eagle flight 4184, a french made ATR - 72, collected too much wing ice and subsequently rolled and nose dived into the ground near Roselawn, Indiana. I did a little research a moment ago and came up with at least 2 more incidents that could be pretty much connected to wing icing. In 1997 a brazilian built Comair Emb-120 went down near detroit and as recently as january 27th of this year, another ATR operated by FedEx crashed on landing in freezing mist conditions.....

So, whats the connection? They were all turbo props..... Thats the one that stands out the most to me at least. Turbo props of course have a much slower landing speed than jet powered aircraft, which allows ice to form and cling to the aircraft more easily. Now, if I remember from the 1994 crash, the end result turned out to be the wing deicing boots not doing their job adequetly. Could this be a repeat? I guess only time will tell.

Obviously, turbo props aren't the only aircraft to be downed due to frozen contamination. Some of you may remember back in 1982, Palm 90 going down in the potomac killing all but like 4 people onboard. The difference between that event and these was that Palm 90 picked up all of its contamination on the ground due to inadequet deicing / anti-icing measures. These planes were already in flight.....

What really made me kinda go bug eyed for a moment though, was one of the passengers onboard CO 3407. Beverly Eckert was a widow from the 9/11 events and had spent the last few years campaigning for the victim's families..... What were the odds that both she and her husband would be killed in two seperate aviation related incidents 8 years apart?

Guess it really does go to show that you can never really be sure your going to see the plane your pushing out of the gate again.... The Comair plane that went down in kentucky a few years back had over nighted at my station like 3 days before it crashed and a Beechcraft operated by U-scare going from Charlotte to my station stalled and crashed on take off a year or two before that..... I don't personally work on the Dash 8 fleet in continental airlink's system, nor did the plane have anything to do with my station, but one of our rivals does operate the aircraft out of my airport everyday. I'm not the best of friends with the U-scare (Officially USAir) boys, but one or two I've talked to really have never had anything bad to say about the planes.  I suppose the news is kinda a downer after the U-Scare mainline going down in the hudson with no loss of life onboard.

Haven't heard anything at work really about it either, other than speculation of course. Then again, I dun work the Continental side as much, I tend to stay more on the NorthWest side of the operation as much as I can. Either way the dice roll though, I'm not going to stop flying anytime soon. The way I see it, if its my day to go, I'm gone..... Somehow or another anyway..... Whether it be in a plane, or driving down the interstate. And of course from a probability stand point, your still a lot better off in the air..... So, my Vegas trip is postponed, but due to overbooked flights rather than fear of falling from the sky. I just hope the NTSB / FAA take a long serious look into turbo props and their ability to tolerate wing icing. 

Tags: Airport Airplane Continental 3407

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