Originally Posted by
jtsastre
I just started browsing these forums and it seems that Colgan gets a bad name. I'm just curious as to why? I'm familiar with accident in 2009, but fail to see how one accident in the airline's history involving fatal injuries of the passengers deserves the moniker "Colgan Coffin"?
Simple searches reveal that almost every airline has had an accident resulting in fatalities, from pilots taking off the wrong runway (Comair 5191) to poor maintenance practices (Alaska 261). Yet they don't get the same scrutiny.
I see they fly turboprops which I've flown and still don't see the reasoning behind such stereotyping. They're louder than a jet for sure, but burn less gas and is less expensive to operate, isn't that a good thing? Clarification is needed.
Jtsastre
Frontline did a piece on Colgan last year and what was presented didn't paint a pretty picture. The basic jist of it was that Colgan runs a really lean operation and has expanded greatly over the last decade without expanding its internal operations to keep up with the growth. So you end up with inexperienced pilots who are over worked and vastly underpaid. Colgan isn't the only one guilty of such practices, but they seem to be one of the largest offenders.