Colgan Air Flight 3407
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Colgan Air Flight 3407 Continental Connection Bombardier Q400.jpg
A similar Q400 aircraft.
Accident summary
Date February 12, 2009
Summary Stalled during landing approach; crashed into a house
Site Clarence Center, New York, United States
43.01160°N 78.63904°WCoordinates: 43.01160°N 78.63904°W
Passengers 45
Crew 4
Fatalities 50 (49 on the aircraft and 1 on the ground)
Injuries (non-fatal) 4 (on the ground)
Survivors 0
Aircraft type Bombardier DHC8-402 Q400
Operator Colgan Air
d/b/a Continental Connection
Registration N200WQ
Flight origin Newark Liberty International Airport, Newark, New Jersey
Destination Buffalo Niagara International Airport, Buffalo, New York
Colgan Air Flight 3407, marketed as Continental Connection under a codeshare agreement with Continental Airlines, was a scheduled passenger flight from Newark, New Jersey, to Buffalo, New York, which crashed on February 12, 2009. The aircraft, a Bombardier Dash-8 Q400, entered an aerodynamic stall from which it did not recover and crashed into a house in Clarence Center, New York at 10:17 p.m. EST (03:17 UTC), killing all 49 passengers and crew on board, as well as one person inside the house.[1]
The accident triggered a wave of inquiries about the operations of regional airlines in the United States. It was the first fatal airline accident in the U.S. since the crash of Comair Flight 5191 in August 2006, with 49 fatalities.
The National Transportation Safety Board conducted the accident investigation and published a final report on February 2, 2010, which found the probable cause to be the pilots' inappropriate response to the stall warnings.[2]
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. Although it did nothing to address the specific causes of the crash – improper stall recovery technique and pilot fatigue – the Airline Safety and Federal Aviation Administrative Extension Act of 2010 (Public Law 111-216) required some of these regulation changes.[3]