On the 12th of February 2009, a Bombardier Q400 turboprop flying on behalf of Continental Connection lost control on approach and plunged into a neighborhood near Buffalo, New York, killing all 49 people on board and one on the ground. The crash immediately galvanized unprecedented public attention, triggering a popular movement for aviation safety that grew with each new revelation uncovered by the National Transportation Safety Board. At the same time, within the aviation community the crash came to be viewed as a product of many of the most serious and intractable problems affecting the industry, from pilot working conditions and pay to training and professionalism, especially at the so-called regional airlines, which operated on behalf of, but without oversight from, the handful of carriers widely known to the general public.
The Dead Man???s Gambit: The crash of Ethiopian Airlines flight 961
On the 23rd of November 1996, three men stormed the cockpit of an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 767, beat the First Officer, and demanded that…