Flight 3407 Memorial

If memory serves, my article on the plane crash when it originally happened was one of my first posts ever.
So sad.=[

CLARENCE, NY-- More than three years after the plane crash in Clarence, the Flight 3407 Memorial will be dedicated today in memory of those who died.
The ceremony wasl held on Long Street in Clarence, where the plane went down on that cold February night.

Fifty people died in the crash.
The flight operated by Colgan Air crashed into a house on Feb. 12, 2009 as it approached Buffalo Niagara International Airport at the end of a short flight from Newark, N.J. All 49 people on board and one of the home's owners, Doug Wielinski, were killed.

At the memorial dedication, the victims' names will be read. Wielinski's wife Karen, who escaped her destroyed home, spoke to reporters after the ceremony.
The tribute features 51 steppingstones, one for each victim and another for the unborn child of one of the passengers.

Screams Recorded In Cockpit of Crashing Plane

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The pilot of a doomed plane that crashed, killing 50 people, said "Jesus Christ" and "We're down," seconds before the plane hurtled from the night sky into a house outside Buffalo, New York, in February.

The last sounds heard in the cockpit were First Officer Rebecca Shaw saying "We're" and then screaming at 10:16 p.m. on February 12, according to a transcript of the cockpit recording.

Seconds earlier, the pilot, Capt. Marvin Renslow, said, "Jesus Christ," as a sound "similar to stick shaker" was heard, the transcript said. Renslow said, "We're down," and a thump was heard before Shaw said, "We're" and screamed.

The National Transportation Safety Board released the transcript of the cockpit recording on Tuesday as it began a three-day hearing in Washington on the crash.
See how crash of Flight 3407 unfolded »

Continental Connection Flight 3407, operated by regional carrier Colgan Air, plunged into a house in Clarence Center, New York, killing all 49 people on board and one man in the house.

About five minutes before the crash, Shaw had shared with Renslow her fear of flying in icy conditions, according to the transcript.

"I don't want to have to experience that and make those kinds of calls. You know I'dve freaked out. I'dve [sic] had like seen this much ice and thought, 'oh my gosh, we were going to crash," Shaw told Renslow.

The NTSB's preliminary investigation determined there was some ice accumulation on the Bombardier Dash 8-Q400 aircraft, but that "icing had a minimal impact on the stall speed of the airplane."

In a story Monday, the Wall Street Journal cited investigators as saying the crash resulted from pilot Marvin Renslow's incorrect response to the plane's precarious drop in speed: He overrode an emergency system known as a "stick pusher," which sends the plane into a dive so it can regain speed and avoid a stall.

Colgan Air, the operator of Continental Connection flights, said Monday that Renslow had never trained in a flight simulator with the safety system that activated just before the plane went down. Colgan said there is no regulatory requirement that it provide hands-on training with the "stick pusher."

"A stick pusher demonstrated in an aircraft simulator is not required by the FAA," the airline said in a statement. "And thus was not included in Colgan's Q400 training program."

The Federal Aviation Administration said its standards do not require hands-on practice with the safety system.

"That's a significant problem," veteran pilot Douglas Moss told CNN. Moss, an expert in stall recovery, believes flight simulator practice with a stick pusher should be mandatory for aspiring pilots.

"It's similar to picking up and throwing a groundball in baseball. You can study it academically all you want to but you really need to develop the proficiency, the skill, the muscle memory required to do that," said Moss.

Renslow had failed five pilot tests, known as "check rides," three of which occurred before he joined the airline, Colgan Air said. Renslow had revealed only one of those failures to the airline, according to Colgan.

NTSB Chairman Mark Rosenker said Tuesday that the board's hearing will not address who is to blame for the accident.

"Over the course of this hearing, we will continue to collect information that will assist the safety board in its examination of safety issues arising from this accident," he said.

He said those issues are: airplane performance, cold weather operations, a sterile cockpit, flight crew training and performance, and fatigue management.

9/11 Cover-Up Connection: Black Boxes Found 15 Hours After Buffalo Crash

One of a plethora of cover-ups surrounding 9/11 is the FBI’s contention that the black boxes onboard the two planes that crashed into the World Trade Center were never found, a claim that has been further discredited following the news that the black box onboard flight Q400 that crashed last night in New York was found within 15hours.


In 2004, New York firefighters Mike Bellone and Nicholas DeMasi went public to say they had found the black boxes at the World Trade Center, but were told to keep their mouths shut by FBI agents. Nicholas DeMasi said that he escorted federal agents on an all-terrain vehicle in October 2001 and helped them locate the devices, a story backed up by rescue volunteer Mike Bellone.

As the Philadelphia Daily News reported at the time, “Their story raises the question of whether there was a some type of cover-up at Ground Zero.”

“At one point, I was asked to take Federal Agents around the site to search for the black boxes from the planes,” he wrote. “We were getting ready to go out. My ATV was parked at the top of the stairs at the Brooks Brothers entrance area. We loaded up about a million dollars worth of equipment and strapped it into the ATV,” said DeMasi.

“At one point, Bellone said he observed the team with a box that appeared charred but was redish-orange with two white stripes. Pictures of the flight recorders on the NTSB and other Web sites show devices that are orange, with two white stripes,” reported the newspaper.

“There was the one that I saw, and two others were recovered in different locations - but I wasn’t there for the other two,” Bellone said. He said the FBI agents left with the boxes.”

In addition, a source at the National Transportation Safety Board later told Counterpunch, “Off the record, we had the boxes….You’d have to get the official word from the FBI as to where they are, but we worked on them here.”

Suspicions surrounding the so-called failure to locate the black boxes at the World Trade Center can only be heightened by the news that the black box from last night’s tragic plane crash in Buffalo was discovered within a mere 15 hours.

Furthermore, both the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder were in perfect condition, as you can see from the image below.

“The black box of a commercial airliner that nose-dived into a Buffalo house in New York has been retrieved, about 15 hours after the incident,” reports Press TV.
The flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder “have been found and they are on their way back here,” said Ted Lopatkiewicz a spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), AFP reported on Friday.
The motivation behind lying about the recovery of the black boxes on 9/11 is obvious - any aspect of the recordings of the onboard conversations between the pilots or the movements of their plane that didn’t coalesce with the official story would have destroyed the fairy tale that was being constructed around the attacks in the very minutes and hours after they started to unfold.
Questions about how a handful of men with box cutters could have overpowered burly ex-military pilots and scores of passengers with apparent ease would not have gone unanswered.
The circumstances surrounding the Buffalo crash and the Beijing skyscraper fire are two events that happened in the same week which offer stark contradictions and only place the credibility of the official 9/11 story further in doubt.
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Buffalo, NY Plane Crash

Buffalo Crash Kills 9/11 Widow Active In Anti-Terror Work

Thursday's upstate plane crash claimed 9/11 activist Beverly Eckert's life, but left untouched her legacy of helping to better guard the nation against terror strikes, fellow advocates said Friday.

Eckert, of Stamford, Conn., was among the 50 killed when Continental Connection Flight 3407 out of Newark crashed into a house. She was traveling to Buffalo to present a scholarship that she set up after her husband, Sean Rooney, died in the 2001 attacks.

"She continued to participate in the life of our school community" after her husband's death, school president John Knight said. "She did everything she could to take this tragic event of Sean's passing and have something positive come of it," Knight said. "She loved Canisius High School, and we loved her."

Canisius High School is rescheduling the presentation that was planned for Friday to include memorials for Eckert and Rooney.

Eckert was also to go to Rooney's hometown of Buffalo to mark with family and friends what would have been his 58th birthday.

"She was an inspiration to me and so many others, and I pray that her family finds peace in the hard days ahead," said President Barack Obama, who met with Eckert in the nation's capital last week.

Eckert cofounded Voices of September 11, an advocacy group for survivors and 9/11 families. In a statement, the group described Eckert as "passionate and deeply committed."

Fellow activist Sally Regenhard, founder of the Skyscraper Safety Campaign, described Eckert as a tireless advocate. "She was part of every worthwhile endeavor on a wide variety of various issues to advocate, from reform to a proper victims memorial," said Regenhard, whose nonprofit works to improve building safety codes and regulations.

Eckert became a prominent spokeswoman for national anti-terrorism reform. She was part of a small group of Sept. 11 widows, parents and children who ultimately forced lawmakers in 2004 to pass sweeping reforms of the U.S. intelligence apparatus. She lobbied for the creation of the 9/11 Commission, which was chartered in 2002, and provided recommendations designed to guard against future attacks.

On Sept. 11, Rooney called his wife from the 105th floor of Tower Two, where he worked for the risk management company Aon. He told her he was trapped. The two spent his last moments over the phone recapping their life together. She recently donated a tape recording of their conversation to the National September 11 Memorial & Museum at Ground Zero.

In 2006, she reflected on that conversation in an interview.

She said they "tried to live the rest of their lives in the few seconds" they had left together before she heard the tower begin its collapse over the phone.