According to an official, the ill-fated Flight 3407 which crashed in Clarence, NY, was on autopilot, a clear violation of airline safety rules.
Steve Chealander of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) noted that Colgan Air recommends pilots fly manually in icy conditions. Pilots are required to do so in severe ice.
As we reported earlier, the pilots of the Bombardier Q400 turboprop reported ice on the wings.
It should be obvious why autopilot is discouraged in these conditions, but as Chealander told The Associated Press:
''You may be able in a manual mode to sense something sooner than the autopilot can sense it.''
50 people were killed in the crash of Flight 3407 last week, including one person on the ground.
While iciing is of course a suspect, the plane itself had sophisticated de-icing systems. The Q400 is equipped with pneumatic boots on the laeding edges of the wings, the tail and the vertical stabilizer, that inflate and contract twice a minute to break ice formations. Additionally, the propellers are electrically heated.
Still all indications so far are that the plane was not traveling fast enough to stay aloft, causing a "stall" condition, which could be caused by ice changing the aerodynamic characteristics of various areas of the plane, such as the wings.
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