Margaret Sullivan: News staff to cover Flight 3407 hearings
Who—or what—was to blame for the horrifying crash of Continental Connection Flight 3407 on Feb. 12?
It would be satisfying, in some ways, to blame one poorly trained pilot or one flawed procedure or one unavoidable weather condition.
But that’s not likely to be the case. Plane crashes are rarely the result of one simple mistake or condition; they are the result of a chain of events, judgments and conditions that have gone wrong.
In the case of the doomed flight that killed 50 people in our community, no one knows exactly what the answer is, but by the middle of this week we’ll know a great deal more. That’s because the federal hearings on the crash begin Tuesday in Washington, D.C.
The News will have a substantial presence at the National Transportation Safety Board hearings, which continue for three days.
In addition to Washington Bureau Chief Jerry Zremski, three staffers from the Buffalo newsroom—investigative reporter Michael Beebe, investigative team leader Susan Schulman and photographer Derek Gee— will be there. Their purpose is not only to cover the hearings but to find leads for future stories.
“There’s going to be a lot going on there and a large amount of information coming out,” Schulman said.
Our first focus, on Tuesday morning, will be to post on www.buffalonews.com the data in its raw, unanalyzed form, as soon as possible after it is released. That should include the safety board’s interview transcripts, cockpit voice recorder transcripts, flight data recorder information and other documents. The material should be available to the readers of our Web site by about 10 a. m. Tuesday. The direct route is this address: www.buffalonews.com/aircrash . (That site is available now and contains our past coverage of the crash).
“Based on what we’ve seen from hearings on other crashes, there should be some riveting material,” says Assistant Managing Editor John Neville, who will be in charge of posting and organizing the information on the News site.
We will update continually as new data arrives and as the hearings progress. Wednesday’s newspaper will help our readers make sense of all the data, with stories, analysis and graphics.
Another major focus of our reporting will be the victims’ families, who will attend the hearings.
“The families want the full story told,” says Schulman. “Some of them have moved beyond the immediate grieving stage to a real interest and expertise in the safety issues.”
Derek Gee expects to focus his camera’s eye on this human side of the story.
Even now, prior to the hearings’ revelations, pieces of the puzzle are beginning to come together.
Zremski reported last week that pilot fatigue, possibly due to overscheduling, is an increasing focus of the investigation. He also broke the news that the National Transportation Safety Board is homing in on pilot training—particularly with how the plane’s stall-protection system operates in icy conditions.
The News’ coverage also has pointed out the tension—and conflicting recommendations between the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board.
Deputy Managing Editor Stan Evans has set some goals for our crash coverage. Not only do we want to find out what happened on the night of Feb. 12, “we also want to take the vast amount of complex information that will come from the hearings and present it in a way that makes sense to our readers.”
Above all, we hope our coverage moves us forward in our quest: to unravel the mystery of the crash’s cause, and to help prevent such a tragedy from ever happening again.
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