Plane landed flat, didn’t dive into house

CLARENCE, N.Y. - The plane that crashed on a house in New York state landed flat on it and was pointed away from the airport where it was supposed to land, an investigator said Saturday.

The Continental Connection Flight 3407 did not dive into the house, as initially believed, said Steve Chealander, spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board.

The New Jersey-to-Buffalo flight was cleared to land on a runway pointing to the southwest, Chealander said. But the plane crashed with its nose pointed to the northeast.

The catastrophic nature of the crash means it could take three or four days to remove human remains, he said. “We’re very sensitive to the families,” he said.

Investigators have been examining instrument data and have listened to the last words of the pilot and co-pilot of Flight 3407 in an effort to determine if ice on the plane’s wings caused the crash.

Officials say the crew of the Continental Connection flight remarked upon significant ice buildup on the wings and windshield shortly before the aircraft pitched violently and slammed into a house Thursday night.

Ice on the wings can interfere catastrophically with an aircraft’s handling and has been blamed for a number of major air disasters over the years, but officials said they had drawn no conclusions as to the cause of this crash.

Chealander said early Saturday that the icing noted by the pilot of Flight 3407 is just one of several things investigators are looking at.

He said the NTSB has been pressing for more regulations to improve deicing.

“We don’t like the progress that’s taken place right now,” Chealander said. “It’s something that requires constant focus.”

He said the NTSB had made recommendations “for several years.”

The aircraft, bound to Buffalo from Newark, N.J., went down in light snow and mist — ideal icing conditions — about six miles short of the airport, and onto the roof of a house in the suburb of Clarence.

All 44 passengers, four crew members, an off-duty pilot and one person on the ground were killed. Two others escaped from the home, which was engulfed in a fireball that burned for hours, making it too hot to begin removing the bodies until around nightfall Friday.

Investigators pulled the “black box” flight recorders from the incinerated wreckage, sent them to Washington and immediately began analyzing the data.

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