Sad News: Continental Connection Flight 3407 crashes into suburban Buffalo NY; 50 dead

Yesterday night around 10:20 pm a Continental Connection Flight 3407, operated by Colgan Air, lost altitude while landing into Buffalo NY and crashed into a house outside Buffalo. The crash caused a huge fire, causing 50 deaths (including all passengers & crew on-board and 1 person in the house).

This is the first fatal incidence for a commercial aircraft for USA in the last 2.5 years.

One of the passengers on board was the widow of a person who died in 9/11/2001 attacks – Beverly Eckert who was heading to Buffalo to celebrate her husband’s 58th birthday.

From Mizozo.com -

In the nation’s first fatal commercial plane crash after 2.5 years, a Continental Connection Flight 3407 (Dash-8), operated by Colgan Air, lost altitude while landing at Buffalo NY and crashed into a suburban home out side Buffalo. The crash resulted in 50 deaths (49 on the plane and 1 in the house). The Dash-8 turboprop went down around 10:20pm EST on Thursday. There was some light snow and fog at that time.

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Videos: US Airways flight 1549′s crash landing videos

Following are the CCTV videos for the flight number 1549′s crash landing that have been released to public -

This is an interesting video with simulations and edits from other videos -

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US Airways flight 1549 crash lands in Hudson River

Flight number 1549 that was scheduled to fly from New York’s LaGuardia Airport to Charlotte’s Charlotte-Douglas Airport at 3:20pm, had to crash land into the Hudson river after both its engines failed due to a run in with a flock of geese. There were around 150 people on flight. According to reports, the pilot maneuvered a soft landing on water after he told the passenger to “brace for impact”. Eye witness say that they saw a large splash in water. Five minutes after landing, passenger were seen on the wings of the aircraft while ferries dropped life jackets. Casualties (if any) are not known yet.

From Mizozo.com -

“There is a speculation that the plane hit a flock of geese that
disabled both the engines forcing the pilots to land the plane on
water.  There were 144 passengers and 6 crew members on the flight. “

From Village Voice Blog -

“People were standing on the wings of the plane” waiting for rescue,
says Harry Martin at My9 News. The rescue scene is alleged to be
visible from the 42nd Street shore of the Hudson. The water temperature
is 42 degrees. Roosevelt Hospital is alerted to receive between 25 to
50 injured passengers. Witness Jayme Lewis says the touchdown was
smooth: “It looked like it wanted to land on the water… very gentle
and very controlled”

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Hurray: JetBlue gets its new terminal

Today, JetBlue welcomed its new home at New York’s John F. Kennedy (JFK) Airport. The airline moved from the old Terminal 6 to the new $743 million Terminal ($663 of which is covered by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey), Terminal 5.  The first flight into the terminal arrived at 5:05 am which was greeted by “balloons and cheering JetBlue staff members“. Yesterday night the airline sent an update on Twitter – “Flt 194 LAS-JFK taxis to its gate: Our last flight into JFK’s T6. ”
(Translated, that was Flight 194, from Las Vegas to J.F.K., arriving at
Terminal 6.)

Highlights of the new terminal -

• 26 Gates (can handle 500 daily flights)
• 20-Lane security checkpoint
• Free Wireless Internet Access
• Children’s Play Area
• 1,500 space Parking Garage

For Architectural Details please read the Bloomberg Article. Some excerpts -

JetBlue Airways has invented a loyalty-inspiring bargain brand with smart customer service and meaningful design touches — like bigger seats — that actually improve today’s degraded flying experience. A few of those touches still can be found within Terminal 5, but that savvy goes missing in the architecture of the building itself by New York-based Gensler, one of the largest architecture firms in the U.S.

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Good News everyone: Now it is easier to charge your phones at Newark Airport

Samsung has installed 50 free charging stations at Newark Liberty International Airport in Terminals A, B and C.

The station has 4 outlets that allows to charge 4 devices simultaneously. Though the charging station is small for charging big laptops, though will be useful for cellphones and small notebooks.

Will definitely be very useful if you are stuck at the airport and your phone battery runs out of juice, especially because you kept refreshing your emails, calling up your friends to kill time and/or reading news/blogs .

From CNET -

“Samsung Mobile has already recently installed free charging stations in
several U.S. airports including 54 at JFK, 51 at LAX, 12 in LaGuardia,
18 in Orlando, and 22 at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.”

“Also, from the looks of it, the shelf could use more space. How do they expect me to charge my 17-inch laptop on that thing? I guess I’ll be copping a squat under the station if I want to be able to watch movies on long flights.”

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Delta Flight leaves passengers stuck on the tarmac for 5 or 7 hours

Depends on the airline or passenger version, according to which the 184 passengers aboard a Las Vegas bound Delta Airlines Flight 621 (JFK-LAS) airplane waited 5 hours or 7 hours on the tarmac before it was ultimately canceled due to bad weather New York’s JFK Airport.

Delta Air Lines Inc. spokeswoman Betsy Talton’s statement from Chicago Tribune –

She said when the plane left the gate, it was No. 15 of 60
planes waiting to depart. Then, she said, air traffic controllers
stopped all scheduled flights because of severe weather.

“The crew waited for the opportunity for the departure lanes to
reopen so we could get customers to their destination; however,
they ultimately made the decision to return to the terminal around
3 p.m., when the crew could not project a definitive departure
time,” Talton said.

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Deja vu: Second near miss at New York’s JFK Airport

Couple of weeks back on July 5th 2008, it was Cayman Air’s Boeing 737 and LAN Chile’s Boeing 767. Last week it was like “Déjà vu” – On Friday July 11th 2008, after an aborted landing on another runway, Delta Airlines’ flight 123 (Boeing 767 flying from Shannon Ireland) crossed flight path of a Comair’s flight 1520 (Bombardier CRJ900) that was taking off. The airplanes came within 600 feet of each other vertically and half-mile horizontally. These distances are very small especially with respect to the typical airplane landing and take off speeds of 185+ miles per hour.

As a result – “The FAA moved quickly to change takeoff and landing procedures at JFK on
perpendicular runways — the kind of runways involved in both incidents.“

From Associated Press -

“Barrett Byrnes, who president of the controllers union at the JFK
tower, said controllers have long sought the procedure changes.

“The
FAA put out an order to JFK to no longer use that approach. That’s
exactly what we wanted to happen,” Byrnes said. “We’ve been trying to
change that for the last 12, 13 years. It’s been an accident waiting to
happen.”"

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Near Collison over New York’s JFK Airport?

National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said that it is investigating a near collision that happened over the weekend over New York’s JFK Airport between a Cayman Airways Flight 792 (Boeing 737) and a Linea Aerea Nacional de Chile (LAN-Chile) Flight 533 (Boeing 767) that came within 100 feet vertically of each other.

From NTSB website -

“The Cayman Airways flight, on approach to runway 22L, was executing a
missed approach and conflicted with the Linea Aeroea Navional de Chile
flight that was departing runway 13R. Tower controllers intervened to
attempt to resolve the conflict, assigning both aircraft diverging
headings. The closest proximity of the two aircraft has not yet been
determined. At the time of the incident, the weather was VFR with 6
miles visibility and haze.”

Though FAA seems to be denying but investigating the report!

From MSNBC -

“”As of this time, we have no report of any such encounter,” FAA
spokeswoman Lynn Tierney said Monday. But as a precaution, “We are
pulling the tapes” to determine what, if anything, took place.”

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Brtish Airways buys French all-business carrier Airline L’Avion

British Airways seem to be heading the all-business US – EU(or Europe) route. As a strategic deal that will bolster their OpenSkies subsidiary, it bought the two plane French Airline L’Avion that flies between Pairs (Orly) and New York (Newark) for £54m (or $107.6 million).

Facts about L’Avion -

• Founded by – 31 year old French entrepreneur Frantz Yvelin
• First flight – January 3rd 2007 (Orly Airport, Paris to New York’s Newark Airport)
• Fleet – Two Boeing 757-200 with 90 business class seats in 2×2 configuration
• Interesting Fact – Fares are generally much lower than other major airlines flying the route
• Fun Fact – Initially named Elysair but changed after a market research
• For virtual tour – CLICK HERE

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British Airways Launched Open Skies Airlines

British Airways is launching a subsidiary called “Open Skies Airline” that will be a transatlantic luxury-service airline. The airline is taking advantage of the transatlantic “open skies” agreement(or EU-US Open Skies Agreement between European Union and United States.

The first flight starts today, Thursday June 19th 2008 from Paris’ Orly airport to New York’s JFK airport. The aircraft flown will be a Boeing 757 with just 82 seats. “There will be 24 passengers in business class, where their seats will
convert into fully-flat beds, while the premium plus passengers will
have extra legroom. The economy section will consist of just 30 seats, allowing passengers more room and more service.” (from here). More on the seats configurations – Read here

BA is considering other European destinations like “Amsterdam, Brussels, Frankfurt and Milan” for the subsidiary airline.

British Airways seems to be following the business model of all-business transatlantic flights of now-bankrupt airlines Silverjet, MAXjet and Eos.

Excerpts from RTE Business –

“The open skies deal between EU and the US came into effect at the
end of March 2008 after years of negotiation. Before, it would not have
been possible for BA or any other EU carrier to fly direct to America
from a destination outside their own country. The deal has also allowed any EU or US airline to use Heathrow Airport in west London for flights to America.“

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