wrote:
Well, that may be true, but the vultures are already circling and the
manufacturer and airline are going to be sued...

http://www.aero-news.net/index.cfm?C...3-38cb-42a0-bd
c8-1ae3e0730f27&

There are some interesting claims I heard directly from the attorney for
the respondent in the following case which was brought against a different
Colgan pilot in 2008:

http://www.ntsb.gov/alj/alj/o_n_o/do...ation/5421.pdf

The above just contains the judicial decisions and reasoning - very little
of the testimony is mentioned - and doesn't cover the nature of the FAA
response.

In the above case, basically the first officer of a Colgan flight accused
the captain of creating a false load manifest and thereby flying
recklessly. The captain and FO had personal animosities and the FO was
allegedly on his way to losing his job when the FO reported the incident.
According to the judge, the "resolution of this case rested on a
credibility determination." He found against the captain.

As I understand it, a list of unprofessional actions and flight activities
were brought to the attention of the FAA during this case, so the FAA
established a task force for the case. The attorney said he was expecting
the FAA task force to take action against Colgan back then - but nothing
happened. It would appear the FAA may have had ample warning of problems
with Colgan operations and just cause to order correction of deficiences,
but did nothing.

It would appear that in this case the FAA allowed its promotion of air
commerce to take precedence over its promotion of air safety, and a
specific and linear causal result was this crash.