So what do we know about the Colgan Air Q400 crash at Buffalo? A reasonably experienced crew landing in the icy dark in a modern turboprop aircraft at a well-equipped airport with some questions about its glideslope reliability. The aircraft slows down for unknown reasons and ends in what looks like a stall-induced horrendous upset at fairly low level from which it fails to recover.
Andy Pasztor of the Wall Street Journal, who I slightly know and whose
company I enjoyed, and his colleague Lynn Lunsford, who I don't think
I've met have done some rooting around like the rest of us and think
they have an insight into what the NTSB is thinking.
They may be right, although the NTSB formally says it hasn't established what they say it has. Certainly they leave a lot of room for uncertainty. And let's face it, there's plenty of that surrounding this accident.
Even if the facts are correct, I know that union officials are looking very hard at the scheduling and fatigue factors around the accident. And we don't know if there was ice, or how severe it was. The point is that we just don't know.
None of which worries Scott McCartney who has written this deeply unpleasant piece which would trample over the dead crew's graves if they were yet in them.
Post-air accident journalism has actually come on a long way in the 20 years that I've been involved in it. Writers working for much less august publications than the WSJ now know at least enough not to indulge in this sort of prematurely certain criticism. McCartney's work is like some weird archived tabloid from an earlier age.
Not only is the article brutal in its cavalier treatment of the Colgan crew, it's dumb in its contrasting glorification of Captain Sullenberger of Hudson River fame. As every professional pilot in the world knows, the jury is still out on Sully and his crew. Does it look like they did a terrific job? Yes it most certainly does. Do we know anything much of what happened in that cockpit, no we most certainly don't.
I wonder what Pasztor and Lunsford think of their colleague's work?
They may be right, although the NTSB formally says it hasn't established what they say it has. Certainly they leave a lot of room for uncertainty. And let's face it, there's plenty of that surrounding this accident.
Even if the facts are correct, I know that union officials are looking very hard at the scheduling and fatigue factors around the accident. And we don't know if there was ice, or how severe it was. The point is that we just don't know.
None of which worries Scott McCartney who has written this deeply unpleasant piece which would trample over the dead crew's graves if they were yet in them.
Post-air accident journalism has actually come on a long way in the 20 years that I've been involved in it. Writers working for much less august publications than the WSJ now know at least enough not to indulge in this sort of prematurely certain criticism. McCartney's work is like some weird archived tabloid from an earlier age.
Not only is the article brutal in its cavalier treatment of the Colgan crew, it's dumb in its contrasting glorification of Captain Sullenberger of Hudson River fame. As every professional pilot in the world knows, the jury is still out on Sully and his crew. Does it look like they did a terrific job? Yes it most certainly does. Do we know anything much of what happened in that cockpit, no we most certainly don't.
I wonder what Pasztor and Lunsford think of their colleague's work?
on February 24, 2009 4:07 PM | Reply
Another obnoxious post -
http://www.flyerblogs.com
At least not pretending to be an expert like the WSJ guy.