No Sully for these guys...what a shame.

What a tragedy. My heart goes out to the families of these people.

To change the topic a bit, Hmmmm I hope this does not sound too self-centered, but I guess it really is.

I get up around 4:30 to do my exercises, and get around for work. I put the TV on and catch up with the news. Today, by about 5:00 I had heard nothing but this story. I had heard all there is to know about the story and grew tired of hearing about it over and over. By 5:30 I had moved on to Sportscenter. I guess they want to cover all the people waking up and that is why they repeat the story.

Anyone else like me? Or am I the only self-centered bastard out here?

I just hope the NTSB doesn't find this was a result of 101Chairborne playing with laser pointers and automobile antennas(or that it was his house that was hit).

Sawdust, it's the natural progression of "The 24 Hour News Cycle", much ado about nothing over and over and over again. You can't let WPBR get one step ahead of you, ya'know.

Sue Bourque told The Buffalo News her sister, Beverly Eckert, was aboard the plane. Eckert is the widow of Sean Rooney, who was killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.

Anyone else like me? Or am I the only self-centered bastard out here?
Reagan has it right. So much airtime to fill, so little effort to do it. It's why CNN broadcasts car chases from anywhere and any private plane with a reported problem. If they can get a live feed, it's journalism. And better to over cover a story than let your competitors get some trivial piece of info before you do.

Wait...I read that long. The 9/11 widow died in this plane crash.

long=wrong

Why would anyone goto Buffalo anyway?

Lake country and wine!

I live near where the pane went down. The weather yesterday night was crappy-- the snow/ice mix was not sticking to the ground, but higher in the air it would have been ice and collected on the turboprop's wings. This would create a bumpy surface to the wings which would decrease lift and increase drag. Flying at a slower speed to come in for landing, if this type of plane hit a cloud formation of supercooled water droplets that would freeze on impact with the wing, there could be a sudden loss in air speed and controllability and could essentially take the plane from cruise to stall speed within one or two minutes. Then it would drop like a rock onto whatever was below it. In these situations autopilot should be disconnected sooner rather than later because it can sometimes mask loss of airspeed. It might be that all these were contributing factors in the crash. we'll find out with data from the flight recorder.

I'm guessing alot of planes that landed upstate last night experienced quite a bit of drag on their final descent, especially under 3,000 feet. I have pussied out in my old age. I haven't flown in snow/ice conditions in 4 years because it caused me too many gray hairs-- I put my Cessna down in a runway snowdrift over in Minnesota (along w/ Manitoba and Iowa the worst place to land IMHO) in 2004 and ended up straining my neck and after that I said, "Fuck THAT!"

You think CNN is bad? Live in Southern California and experience the horror of "Storm Watch 2009".

There was no plane. If there was one, it shot the house with a missile.

Maybe the pilot got distracted by one of them bikini covered planes!

I just hope the NTSB doesn't find this was a result of 101Chairborne playing with laser pointers and automobile antennas(or that it was his house that was hit).

#3 | Posted by Reagan58 at 2009-02-13 08:36 AM |

This is too funny, I came here to poat the exact same joke about 101 drunk and playing with laser pointer. LOL

Briwo,

It's all fun and games until someone puts an eye out then it just hilarious.

Reagan, FF!

"""I get up around 4:30 to do my exercises, """

Holy fuck. I wouldn't call that self-centered, I'd call that insane.

KG, what gets me about this so far is that Vmca for this beast is 91 KIAS with 15 degrees...I couldn't believe that with an aircraft weighing (worst case empty fuel) around 52K lbs that it could maneuver so slow.

And about the ice, the aircraft is certified under FAR 25.1419. Here's a little quote from the 1st para. "If the applicant seeks certification for flight in icing conditions, the airplane must be able to safely operate in the continuous maximum and intermittent maximum icing conditions of appendix C."

Witnesses said they saw it dive into the ground right? Seems kinda odd with such a slow maneuvering speed and capable ice protection system for that to occur.

But we'll see what the NTSB has to say....I'll be following this one.

Last night on the local news they interviewed a pilot who landed 5 minutes before this plane and he was adamant that weather was not a factor.

Why would anyone goto Buffalo anyway?

#9 | Posted by yougothurt

Keep thinking that way dude; the less people who come here, the better my quality of life remains.

Observer27 - Regardless of what the plane was certified for if the wings ice too much. It cause flow seperation and then plane is going to drop like a rock. I mean it might be a case of improper maintainance of the wings which I think can promote more severe icing. I'm not a pilot, just an Aero major. But I know we learned icing = bad = flow seperation = dead passengers. But if the wings iced to much it wouldn't matter what the maneuvering speed was or any other wing characteristics.

I betcha Tim Russert is giving the local news on this story up in Heaven. Wonder if He is using a white board or not.

Larry

Last night on Fox Snooze they were going on and on about the "wintry conditions". It was 33 degrees with light snow and 15 mph winds. I suppose those are wintry conditions if your only frame of reference is Sydney, Australia or L.A.

If I had been flying the plane, I would have tried to NOT crash.

Astro your right about that, maintenance might be something to look at. I have flown planes bigger and smaller in the same area and just find this a bit odd.

I used to fly cargo from ROC-SYR-UTC-TEB-BUF-ROC 5 nights a week and the planes I flew, both turbo prop and jet, dealt with icing and...well...handled it.

Either turn on the bleed air or pop the boots and the ice would shed.

I find it highly suspicious that an advanced machine like this 1 would suffer from ice issues. But I guess it could happen.

I'm saddened this occured, we'll just have to follow along with the NTSB as they poke and probe the site for info.

One thing I learned as an accident investigator was that you can never make any conclusions until all the facts are in.

BTW Congrats on your career choice, I'm an Embry-Riddle Alumn myself

Well it appears "the pilots noticed a build-up of ice on the wings and windshield" as per investigators.

They are not ruling that as the cause but are saying it does appear it might have been a factor.

Interesting so far

Still no sign of Chairpoodle?

I'm interested to see what conclusions can be drawn from this accident. And if it is something that can be avoided in the future. It does seem crazy that as advanced as our technology is that this plane couldn't make a safe landing. It could be that some of the anti-icing features weren't working and so even if the conditions weren't terrible, they couldn't prevent the icing from building up. I just hope we can get some facts out of this. Embry-Riddle is impressive. I went to Ohio State myself if that wasn't terribly obvious from my username.

Yep, like you said maintenance...and oh boy if it is...lawsuits up the ying yang.

I just had flashbacks of my nightly landings in Teterboro and Buf and how 'fun'they were.

Once I was about 45 minutes out of Buf inbound and tower reported they were closing the airport due to WX. "So there I was" at 5k ft holding over the VOR, gettin my ass kicked with turb trying to find a place to dump my 800 lbs of cargo.

Ended up going to ROC and having DHL send a truck to ROC to pick up the load.

ahhhhh good times

I'm not a fan of frivolous lawsuits but if the airlines were saving money by being lax on maintenance then they should pay.

Those nightly landings are why I never wanted to be a pilot. If I'm driving my car and the weather is bad I can pull off to the side and let it die down. Kind of hard to do in an airplane.

"Bombardier spokesman Marc Duchesne said the plane was put into service very recently and is only a few months old. "

If it really was so new maybe it wasn't maintenance but bad manufacturing.