Closure... sort of

In October of 2004, I received one of the worst kinds of phone calls one could receive. It was my friend, M. There had been a plane crash and our friend J, was one of the pilot's on board. Over the past two years, there have been numerous hearings, studies, press releases and delays. Today was the final hearing. Even though it's been well over two years since the accident, reading the press release today took me back to that awful day. I could tell you exactly what time my phone rang at work, what I was wearing and where we went to attempt to eat lunch.

The NTSB's finding was definitely not in J's favor. Below is a portion of the press release I received via email. As soon as I can actually find it on the NTSB's website, I'll add a link to it.

While the report doesn't paint him in a good light, he was a good pilot and person.

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NTSB DETERMINES PILOTS' POOR AIRMANSHIP CAUSED 2004 PINNACLE
ACCIDENT IN JEFFERSON CITY, MISSOURI

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Washington, DC -- The National Transportation Safety Board
determined today that the probable cause of the October 14,
2004 accident of Pinnacle Airlines flight 3701 was the pilots'
unprofessional behavior, deviation from standard operating
procedures, and poor airmanship, which resulted in an in-
flight emergency from which they were unable to recover, in
part because of the pilots' inadequate training; the pilots'
failure to prepare for an emergency landing in a timely
manner, including communicating with air traffic controllers
immediately after the emergency about the loss of both engines
and the availability of landing sites; and the pilots' failure
to achieve and maintain the target airspeed in the double
engine failure checklist, which caused the engine cores to
stop rotating and resulted in the core lock engine condition......
"This accident was caused by the pilots' inappropriate and
unprofessional behavior," said NTSB Chairman Mark V.
Rosenker. "Simply adhering to standard operating procedures
and correctly implementing emergency procedures would have
gone a long way to adverting this tragic accident."