When Outsourcing Kills: Colgan Air and Its Big 3 Partners

PBS’ Frontline unit has done a fascinating and disturbing bit of documentary journalism that tells the story of Colgan Air and the circumstances surrounding the crash of Continental flight 3407 in Buffalo, New York in February, 2009.

Colgan provides feeder services for United Airlines (as United Express), Continental (as Continental Connection), and US Airways (as US Airways Express), serving approximately 50 cities in the northeastern United States and Texas.

Click here to view the program in its entirety on the PBS site:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/flyingcheap/view/

(You may also want to read the alarming comments of a United Airlines mechanic on the same page, who asserts several instances of serious, questionable maintenance practices at United’s mainline fleet.)

A total of 50 people (45 passengers; 2 crew members; 1 on the ground) lost their lives in the Colgan/ Continental incident, which was investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board. NTSB concluded that the crash, first believed to have been caused by icing during bad weather, was avoidable; the root cause of the crash was determined to be operational errors by both pilots, almost certainly exacerbated by both inexperience and fatigue.