Comair Flight 3272
A tragedy led to the FAA’s flight protocol during icy weather.
by Alice Momany
On January 9, 1997, in Michigan, approximately ten minutes before 4:00 p.m., a city supervisor was anxiously checking the clock for the signal that it was time to go home. A few blocks away, a high school student stepped off her bus, trudging through the snow to get to her house. In the skies of Ohio, a flight attendant was distributing crackers and water to 26 passengers on a commuter plane. In Kentucky, the flight attendant’s husband just got off work. In Minnesota, a loving mother was waiting for a call from her son. All of these people’s lives would be shaped soon by the same event. January 9 would become a day of tragedy and remembrance, though at the time, to each individual involved, it was just another Thursday.
Mark Brant woke up that morning and went about his regular morning routine. He took a quick shower, scrambled an egg for breakfast, and washed it down with a mug of scorching hot coffee. He had just enough time to glance at the daily headlines in The Monroe News before he needed to leave. Mark had a full day ahead of him as a city supervisor for Raisinville Township in Monroe County, Michigan.
He arrived at his office and grimaced at the stack of papers that seemed to grow overnight. Mark slid off his coat, sprinkled with snowflakes from the January weather, and went to the breakroom to grab his second cup of coffee for the day.
As the ordinary Thursday carried on, Mark answered phone calls, filed papers, and gossiped with coworkers.
Later, the afternoon drag hit. Mark glanced at the clock. 3:30 p.m. He could not help but anticipate the weekend as the hours slowly ticked by. Outside the window, snow fell quicker and heavier. After what seemed like an hour, he glanced at the clock again. 3:50 p.m.
A distant whistling sound, faint but perplexing, ruptured the midday silence. Mark looked out his window. The noise intensified. It grew more concerning.
Suddenly, the piercing sound of metal scraping against the earth filled the office. It was a head-splitting noise. Mark lurched forward in his chair, reaching for the corners of his desk to steady himself.
The entire building jolted aggressively. The lights hanging from the ceiling swayed back and forth. Books flew off the shelves. Paintings leapt from the walls, their frames shattering. The deafening sound of an explosion rang throughout the air. Was it a car? An earthquake? An asteroid?
“When it first happened, I heard a huge boom,” Mark recalled. “I thought someone had slid off the road and hit this building because the whole building shook.”
But Mark’s Thursday was not derailed by an uncontrollable car. It was a commuter plane: Comair flight 3272. The flight was headed an hour north from the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International (CVG) Airport to the Detroit Metropolitan (DTW) Airport. Twenty-nine different individuals boarded the plane, anxiously awaiting to land in Michigan’s largest city.
Around the time that Mark was counting down the hours, fourteen-year-old Cathy Conner was riding the bus, tired from a full day at school. She could not wait for Friday. And like Mark, she too was anticipating the weekend.
As the bus rolled up to Cathy’s stop, she thanked the driver for the ride and turned the corner to her street. She pulled her coat tightly around her and thought about what to have as a snack when she got home. She looked up at the enormous sky. It was still and silent. The pure white snow dusted her eyelashes.
Suddenly, she noticed something moving through the air, with such speed and force it was impossible to look away. A white blur, almost as if it were a shooting star, hurtled to the ground at more than 100 miles per hour.
Cathy heard the explosion. She felt the ground tremble beneath her. Her knees froze, but her whole body shook. Suddenly, flames erupted from a nearby field that was crested white.
“When the flames finally died, there was a bunch of black smoke,” Cathy said. “Just black smoke. I don’t think anybody could have survived. It was really bad.”
On December 27, 1996, employees at the CVG Airport huddled around aircraft 3272 amid the frigid air. The plane was an Embraer commuter plane subcontracted to Comair Airlines.
The employees had once gathered around the same plane, a month before, checking the fuselage and wings for corrosion and damage. They had also inspected the operating control unit. Now, the crew reviewed the rudder, which controls the vertical axis of the plane, the Angle of Attack, which measures the angle of the wind relative to the wing, and warning systems, which alert the pilot if the aircraft is in danger of crashing.
The crew found nothing wrong with any of the systems.
Although they had just inspected the plane a month earlier, they had to do a routine check on the horizontal stabilizer and elevators.
The horizontal stabilizer is one of the most significant pieces on an airplane. It prevents the plane’s nose from veering up and down and keeps it flying straight. The employees checked the spars, lead and trailing edges, cables, wires, empennage covering, and fuselage on the horizontal stabilizer.
They also checked the core of each elevator on the aircraft, a critical component that controls the movement of the lateral axis. Most planes have two elevators on each side of the horizontal stabilizer.
Despite spending all day on the plane, the employees found no abnormalities.
Two weeks after the employees checked aircraft 3272, Darinda Ogden Nilsen was 45 minutes into her drive to CVG Airport south of Cincinnati.
The January snow sprinkled across her windshield as she drove from her home in Lexington, Kentucky. The roads, coated in pure white, could hide unexpected spots of ice. Darinda was frustrated. She hated driving in the snow and was not even supposed to be working. She was covering a shift for her friend.
Once she arrived at the airport, she clocked in and prepared for her flight. She was the only attendant on the small commuter plane. The flight would have 26 passengers, a pilot, a co-pilot, and her.
She looked in the mirror as she adjusted her uniform. She forgot to tell her husband, Rich, that she was covering this shift. She boarded the Embraer plane and decided she would talk to him once they landed. It was going to be a short flight, only about an hour, to Detroit. The plane was supposed to depart at 2:30 p.m., but the snow was delaying departure, if only slightly.
She sat in her seat and watched as passengers filtered in.
Two middle-aged men in suits boarded the plane but sat on opposite sides. A group of men discussing engineering plants took up one row. A young woman with a book about the Spanish language grabbed a window seat. A middle-aged woman sat down in the row in front of her. A young girl, who looked like a student wearing a University of Michigan sweatshirt, recognized the middle-aged woman.
From what Darinda gathered through eavesdropping on the various conversations, the plane held engineers, car dealership owners, a Spanish teacher, a professor, a college student, and a minister. From various parts of the world pursuing different life paths, each of these individuals shared something: a ticket. A simple piece of paper. From Cincinnati to Detroit, they would share one hour of their lives together, exchanging small talk and awkwardly fighting over the armrests.
More and more passengers filtered in, and Darinda knew it was time to start hosting. She walked up and down the aisle, faking a smile and asking if the passengers were comfortable. At 2:51 p.m., she received the signal from Dann Carlsen, the pilot, and Kenneth Reece, the co-pilot, that they were preparing for take-off. As if on cue, she began the same speech she had said a hundred times before.
Around the same time that Darinda was preparing for the flight, Carolyn Pitcher was on her way with her son to her brother’s house in Raisinville Township. Carolyn was visiting her brother because she had the day off from work.
Carolyn was an emergency services dispatcher in Monroe County. After a taxing week of break-ins, car accidents, and threats, she was excited for a day off. She was still getting into the routine of working her standard schedule after the craziness of the holidays.
As she drove to her brother’s house, she noticed the snow was falling thicker. She blasted the heat in her car to keep warm as her son carried on a one-sided conversation about the latest gossip at school.
Carolyn arrived at her brother’s house, and they debriefed all the family drama that unfolded over Christmas. They discussed the family members they had not seen since last year, debated over what were the tackiest gifts, and praised grandma’s cooking.
Suddenly, she heard a piercing sound. Carolyn, her son, and her brother jumped on their feet and peered out the back window.
The sky was charcoal gray, filled with smoke. Carolyn ran out of the house. The air smelled metallic, like burnt metal. She covered her nose to avoid inhaling the pungent fumes, but the hazy air, thick with soot, filled her nose. She watched as flames licked the frigid air in the field behind her brother’s house.
The only thing Carolyn could see encased in the fire and smoke was a large metal object.
“I went and stood out on a picnic table, and there was so much smoke,” Carolyn said. “The minute you saw it, you knew there couldn’t be any survivors.”
Suddenly, a sea of fire trucks, ambulances, and police cars flooded the site. Firefighters and EMTs disappeared into the smoky haze while police barricaded the scene. Large white bags were just barely visible.
Doug Dandron, the communications supervisor at the dispatcher’s office of the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office, responded to the crash. Doug was in contact with the plane’s crew but lost connection at 3:56 p.m.
“They were on their final approach, and then they disappeared from radar,” Doug said.
At 4:30 p.m., the Federal Aviation Association (FAA) notified Comair Airlines about an accident in Monroe County.
When the FAA learned about the crash, the organization quickly communicated with the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). The NTSB dispatched a team of investigators at 5:00 p.m. to discover the cause of the accident. J.C. Lawson III, a Comair pilot at his home in Washington D.C., agreed to help piece together the events of the tragedy. J.C. deciphered recordings from the plane’s flight recorder.
“He’s gotta use the phone,” the transcription began with an unattributed voice from the plane.
“Comair thirty-two seventy-two climb maintain level two one zero,” was the response from the flight crew in Detroit.
At 3:40 p.m., the communication crew in Detroit warned Dann and Kenneth of light snow and low temperatures, and they confirmed the deice procedure was in effect. Six minutes later, the operator warned the pilots again of light snow. At 3:53 p.m., the operator alerted Dann of slick runways and low visibilities in Detroit and urged the pilot to reduce speed.
At no point during the flight did Dann ever express concern about the weather.
“Thanks,” is the last phrase Dann utters before the auto-pilot aural warning begins to ring. The auto-pilot aural warning indicates that the airplane is descending toward the ground.
The high-pitched chime combined with an automated alert stating, “stall warning,” was followed by “Oh, oh shit,” and suddenly, the only thing J.C. could make out was warning signals in the background accompanied by the heavy sound of human breathing. J.C. could not determine if the breathing came from Dann or Kenneth. The alarms sounded for 14 seconds before the tape cut to silence.
At 3:54 p.m., the plane dived nose-down in a snowy field 19 miles southwest of the DTW Airport. The aircraft burst into post-impact flames.
J.C. knew both Dann and Kenneth. They were colleagues. They were friends. He sat in the empty stillness that filled his office.
About seven hours away, Mitchell Serber, also a pilot for Comair, flew with ten other NTSB crew members to the scene. The members began digging through debris and scattered pieces of the fuselage. Mitchell uncovered broken pieces of plastic, shattered glass, a book on the Spanish language, briefcases, and a backpack that looked like it belonged to a student. He noticed a crushed horizontal stabilizer. He kicked around what was left of the plane with his feet as the cold air stung his ears.
Like J.C., Mitchell knew Dann and Kenneth.
Mitchell looked up at the dark sky and saw debris in the trees. He wanted to return to his home in Washington D.C. He wanted to be with his family. He did not want to be investigating a case that ended the lives of two of his friends.
Mitchell, and the rest of the NTSB team, determined the airplane was destroyed by ground impact and fire due to ice buildup in the airplane’s wings. The ice made it impossible to regulate minimum airspeeds for flying. Airspeeds are critical because it helps the pilot execute turns and maintain a level flight.
The team found no evidence of preexisting mechanical malfunctions or other defects to the airplane’s structure, control systems, or propellers that would have contributed to the accident. The pilots were operating the plane with the autopilot engaged. Because the pilots were not flying the aircraft manually, they did not notice the increase in force it took to maintain the plane’s flight. The loss of control was unavoidable.
That night, Rich Nilsen received a phone call from his mother-in-law. He was at his home in Lexington, trying to stay warm. He began to prepare dinner since his wife, Darinda, was not home. He had no clue where she was, but he was hungry. He answered the phone and quickly recognized his mother-in-law’s voice. She sounded upset. He asked her what was wrong, but nothing could have prepared him for her response.
She explained to him that she had just gotten off the phone with the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department. Darinda had died in the tragedy.
Rich was confused. He did not even know that she was on a flight. She was not scheduled to work.
“She wasn’t even supposed to be on that plane,” he said.
Rich stood perfectly still, afraid to move, shaken by the news. Suddenly, he realized how large and empty the house felt. He shuddered. He looked at the two plates of food he had just prepared, steam rising above them, sitting on the kitchen table. He had lost his appetite but did not put them away. The plates sat there, getting cold.
Twelve hours away from Rich, Arlene Miasel also received an unexpected call that day at her home in Prior Lake, Minnesota.
When Arlene’s son, Dann Carlsen, once told her he wanted to become a pilot, she immediately disapproved. She loved her son more than anything, but the thought of him flying a plane terrified her. She constantly expressed her displeasure with his career choice but was proud of her son and his bravery.
On January 9, her worst fear came true.
“Dann told me, he always said, ‘Mom, you worry about me too much,’” Arlene said. “And the last thing he said before he hugged me, he said, ‘Mom don’t worry about me, because mom, I’m always the first one down.’”
After a thorough investigation conducted by the NTSB, the Safety Board met with the FAA on March 13, 1997, to discuss the requirements, installation, and use of ice detection equipment on Embraer airplanes. The two organizations also discussed deicing boot operation procedures and minimum airspeeds for operating Embraer aircrafts in icy conditions.
On May 21, 1997, the Safety Board proposed four safety recommendations to the FAA that would change the future of airplane travel.
The NTSB first asked the FAA to require a minimum airspeed of 160 knots, or 184 mph, for Embraer planes in all phases of flight, including during icy conditions. At the time of the accident, aircraft 3272 was flying at 170 knots, 195 mph. The NTSB determined that the FAA’s failure to establish an adequate minimum airspeed during icy conditions led the pilots to lose control when the airplane accumulated a thin, rough accretion of ice on its lifting surfaces.
The Safety Board also asked for information on aircraft deicing and procedures in Embraer’s operating manuals and training programs to be consistent with the flight manual. The current FAA policy allowed air carriers to not adopt an airplane flight manual for operational procedures, but carriers needed a written justification to be exempt.
The NTSB also urged the FAA to equip Embraer instructors to train flight crews with knowledge on recognizing icy conditions and the procedure for using deicing boots. Deicing boots prevent ice from forming over the edges of the wings. The boots react with the pressure in the air and expand to break off the ice. The FAA requires pilots to check the boots before every flight.
The last recommendation the Safety Board submitted was the requirement for Embraer aircrafts to be equipped with automated ice detection and crew alerting systems for detecting ice accretion.
On June 18, 1997, the FAA responded to the recommendations with the actions it planned to take.
The FAA ensured that Embraer operating manuals and pilot training programs would emphasize the requirement for activation of ice protection systems. It also said it would add information regarding operating aircrafts during icy conditions. The FAA said it would also install ice detection systems on all Embraer planes and revise the operating manual to include procedures for testing system integrity. It would now require daily checks of the ice detection system and a minimum airspeed of 160 knots.
On July 8, 1998, the NTSB accepted the FAA’s response.
In the days that followed the crash, many Raisinville residents, families, and employees demanded answers. How could a plane that passed all inspections two weeks prior end the lives of 29 individuals?
Although it was a day of tragedy for many, the Raisinville crash changed the future of airline travel and contributed to the termination of one of the largest airline companies.
In 1999, Comair had been the largest regional carrier in the United States, but in addition to the Raisinville accident, the airline reported fatal plane crashes in 1979 and 2006. The airline was bought and owned as a subsidiary of Delta Airlines in 2000, but five years later, Comair entered bankruptcy protection. In 2012, the airline announced it was ceasing operations and shutting down.
The impact of the lives lost on that snowy January Thursday led to more adequate training and information for Comair pilots on protocols and operations during icy conditions. It also established a minimum airspeed to maintain a level flight and instituted necessary daily checks on deicing boots.
Wives lost their husbands. A group of engineers lost their coworkers. A Spanish teacher never got to see her students again. A father lost his daughter. Others lost friends, parents, siblings, and coworkers. Although they would never know the impact of that ordinary day, their tragedy was critical for the safety of future passengers of Comair airlines.
