The PBS Frontline investigation of Colgan Air – and the US regional airlines – provides a fascinating, and troubling, look inside 52% of the commercial aircraft operations taking place in the US every year.
Miles O’Brien references the previous six fatal commercial airline accidents in the United States, here’s background information on all six:
I’ll let the hour-long program speak for itself, but the broader implications of what has been created here speaks to the larger question of the broken business models that have resulted in a chronically unprofitable industry (at-large). There are the notable exceptions in profitability, but in the aerospace industry continuum of widget making all the way to aircraft operation, the farther you get from flying the airframe the higher the margins. Is re-regulation the answer? I don’t pretend to have the answer, but there clearly the dynamics need to be changed in a very real way.
This post was originally published to the internet between 2007 and 2012. Links, images, and embedded media from that era may no longer function as intended.
This post originally appeared at Flightglobal.com from 2007 to 2012.