PBS Frontline Investigation Prompted by Buffalo Crash

By WXXI Center for Public Affairs

Rochester, NY – It was late, on a cold winter night, when the pilots flying Continental Flight 3407 made a fatal mistake at the controls. But for PBS Correspondent Miles O'Brien, that's not the end of the story. It's the beginning.

"On that night, a year ago, on that final approach toward Buffalo, there were so many factors at work that funneled into that cockpit that made that crash happen."

O'Brien, along with television producer Rick Young, has spent much of the past year examining each one of those factors. Their investigation is now detailed in the Frontline program called Flying Cheap. It shows the seamy side of the regional airline industry. It's the side of the industry you don't see when you are buckled into a passenger seat. And, O'Brien says, everything that is wrong with the industry came to a head last February in Buffalo.

"That's when you get a watershed. When all thse things that are at play and have been a source of concern leads to an accident. Unfortunately, we saw a lot of these things coming, but not much was done about it."

The regional airline industry is largely comprised of small companies on contract with major airlines. To win these competitive contracts, the regionals maintain lower standards than the big guys do. You'll probably never know the names of these companies unless - as in the case of Flight 3407 - they crash. That flight was operated by a company called Colgan Air.

"We tried repeatedly to get people at Colgan and the company that now owns that Colgan subsidiary Pinnacle to talk to us and they refused. We also tried, just ancillary to this, attempted on repeated occasions to get into a simulator to get an idea of what happened on that night, flying into Buffalo. We were shut down in that regard as well."

Continental Airline officials would not agree to an interview with Frontline either.

"The fact is, the people who are sitting in those office now, who are responsible for the safety of all of us who fly on these airplanes, would not hold themselves accountable to us in this documentary. And I think that's unfortunate. I think they owe us more," said O'Brien.

O'Brien is a pilot and has long reported on the aviation industry. But even he was surprised by what the people he did talk to -- including a few former Colgan pilots - had to say. And he hopes everyone who watches the program has a better idea of what flying cheap really means.

"When you go to the internet, when you go to Travelocity or Orbitz and you click on that ticket, make sure you see who is operating that flight. Make sure you understand who is actually flying that flight. It might say Continental. It might say Delta. But it's actually another company."

Frontline's Flying Cheap airs Tuesday February 9 at 9:00pm on WXXI-TV in Rochester. I'm Julie Philipp, WXXI News.