Thoughts on Continental Connect Flight 3407

Travel Blog  •  Rob Verger  •  02.17.09 | 10:49 AM ET

The tragic crash Thursday night of the regional commuter plane—a Bombardier turboprop—is shocking and sad, and many are speculating that icing played a role. (Although The New York Times reports that “a member of the National Transportation Safety Board urged ‘caution about jumping to conclusions that it might be an icing incident.’”) We won’t know the entire story until the N.T.S.B. issues its report, but here’s what some are thinking now.

At Ask the Pilot, Patrick Smith explains what could have happened: “The hunch among pilots right now is that the plane may have suffered a tailplane stall due to ice buildup on the horizontal stabilizers,” he writes. “Horizontal stabilizers are the smaller, tail-mounted wings that help control a plane’s nose-up/nose-down motion, known as ‘pitch.’ Normally, stabilizers are considerably less sensitive to icing than the main wings, but a prolonged and severe encounter could have, in theory, overwhelmed the aft de-icing boots.”

The boots that he is referring to are the de-icing system on this aircraft; they are, as The New York Times explains, “a bit like tires, on the front edges of the wings, the tail and the vertical stabilizer, that inflate and contract twice a minute to break ice accumulations.”

“Then, as the aircraft was slowed and configured for landing, one or both stabilizers stalled entirely, resulting in a loss of pitch authority and the subsequent crash,” Smith writes, but adds, “That’s conjecture at this point, but it’s certainly plausible.”

Smith also notes, “The official findings are liable to point to not a single cause but rather a combination of causes—a chain of unlikely events, survivable by themselves but deadly in combination.”

The Middle Seat Terminal has a good explanation, by the way, about how ice can affect the amount of lift a plane’s wings generate and thus potentially cause a crash.

Smith’s description of “a chain of unlikely events, survivable by themselves but deadly in combination” reminds me of some of what Malcolm Gladwell wrote about plane crashes in his latest book, “Outliers,” which I explored in an earlier blog item. “Plane crashes are much more likely to be the result of an accumulation of minor difficulties and seemingly trivial malfunctions,” he writes, than they are to be the result a single, catastrophic event or factor.

Thus, with this crash and others, there is a complicated story about what happened that encompasses a variety of factors and decisions. And it will take quite some time before that story becomes known in its entirety. We will just need to wait.


Rob Verger

Rob Verger is a frequent contributor to World Hum and the site's former air travel blogger. His articles and photographs have appeared in the Boston Globe and other publications, and he's a former undergraduate writing instructor at Columbia University. If you like, .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or follow him on Twitter.


2 Comments for Thoughts on Continental Connect Flight 3407

long island girl 02.17.09 | 9:46 PM ET

I post a comment here to extend my condolences to the people who has been a part of this incident. It will be another mystery to be solved to why this has happened and cost the lives of 50 people who were expecting to land safely and meet their loved ones who were also expecting them.

Diane Trigilio 02.18.09 | 1:09 PM ET

This area will forever be changed by the crash of flight 3407.  We will all feel different about flying in winter weather.  Every plane that passes by I look out the window to be sure it’s high in the sky especially at night around 10:15pm when I heard the plane.  At the time it sure didn’t sound like a plane to me now every noise I look out.  God be with all the families.

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