Pilot is faulted in fatal N.Y. air crash

WASHINGTON -- A pilot on the flight that killed 50 people outside Buffalo last month apparently triggered the crash by yanking the aircraft into a sudden steep climb that caused it to lose control, federal accident investigators said Wednesday.

Continental Connection Flight 3407 slammed into a house Feb. 12 in Clarence Center, N.Y., killing all 49 people aboard and a man in a house that was engulfed in flames. The flight, operated by regional carrier Colgan Air, was the first fatal U.S. commercial airline crash in 2½ years.

In the most detailed account to date of the crash, the National Transportation Safety Board suggested the pilot's actions, not weather conditions, prompted the plane to go out of control. The plane was flying in freezing rain and snow, but the NTSB found that ice had a "minimal impact" on how the plane performed.

The report raises broad questions about how the two pilots were trained and hints that they may not have adhered to rules governing cockpit conduct.

"The tragedy of Flight 3407 is the deadliest transportation accident in the United States in more than seven years," acting NTSB Chairman Mark Rosenker said. "The circumstances of the crash have raised several issues that go well beyond the widely discussed matter of airframe icing."

A spokesman for Colgan's corporate parent, Pinnacle Airlines, urged that people not "jump to conclusions." The airline's training program met or exceeded federal aviation regulations, spokesman Joe Williams said.

As the plane prepared to land, a warning device known as a "stick shaker" activated, the NTSB said. The stick shaker alerts pilots that they are flying too slowly by vibrating the control column. If a plane gets too slow, it can experience an aerodynamic "stall," in which air flowing over the wings can no longer keep the plane aloft.

Pilots are trained to respond to the stick shaker by immediately lowering a plane's nose and increasing power, but the pilots on the Colgan Air flight pulled the nose up, the NTSB said. Such steep climbs make a plane's wing more likely to stall.