Pilot May Have Put Plane Into Deadly Plunge

Feb. 18, 2009— -- ABC News has learned that the pilot of the Continental Express commuter plane that crashed in Buffalo, N.Y. Feb. 12 may have put the plane into its deadly plunge.

A source close to the investigation says information from the flight data recorder indicated that the pilot's control column, essentially the device he uses to steer the plane, moved sharply backward, pitching the nose of the turboprop upward.

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Investigators say they were surprised that a pilot would take that action so they want to make sure there isn't some other explanation for the movement of the plane's controls.

"There is no reason that I can think of that a pilot would voluntarily pull the nose up to 30 degrees after a stall warning," ABC News aviation consultant John Nance said today. "This has got to be some combination of misperception, misunderstanding of what was happening, or something else that we haven't discovered yet."

Nance said it's premature to say the crash was the result of a pilot's error.

"It's really wrong to assign an individual error to the pilot or to the crew because they may have been reacting to something that they perceived, and that reaction may have been exactly right and the perception was wrong," said Nance.

"We don't know exactly what this pilot was seeing, feeling, and perceiving at that point and until we've got a pretty good idea of that we're not going to know why that yoke moved back," Nance added.

Today, Colgan Air, which operated the flight for Continental, defended the pilot's experience and stressed confidence in its operations.

"Colgan has instilled a systemic culture of safety throughout our organization that is rooted in significant investment in crew training, systems, leadership and equipment," the airline said in a Wednesday statement. "Our crew training programs meet or exceed the regulatory requirements for all major airlines. Our ground and air training is designed in coordination with the aircraft manufacturer, one of the most respected providers of aviation flight training and the Federal Aviation Administration utilizing state-of-the-art training devices, such as full-motion simulators, among others."