Crash victim’s kin sue Continental Airlines and aircraft maker Bombardier Aerospace

Relatives of a woman who was killed, along with 48 other people, when a commuter plane of Continental Airlines crashed into a suburb in Buffalo, New York, on February 12, 2009, have filed a lawsuit against the airline and the manufacturer of the plane.

Susan Wehle, 55, of Amerst, New York, the United States, died when the plane plummeted from the sky into a home in Clarence, New York. In the accident, all the people on board and one person in the home were killed. 

The flight was on its way from Newark, New Jersey, and only 6 miles from arriving at Buffalo’s Niagara International Airport, its destination, when it crashed.  

The United States National Transportation Safety Board is investigating into the accident. The probe is expected to take a year or even more. 

Investigators suspect ice that had collected on the wings of the Continental Airlines Flight 3407 as well as the crew’s handling of the stricken jet. 

Continental Airlines, Pinnacle Airlines and its subsidiary Colgan Air were operating the flight. Also named in the suit is Bombardier Aerospace, which made the Dash 8 Q400 aircraft. 

The suit, filed in federal court in Buffalo, New York, alleges “negligence and wrongful death by defendants Continental Airlines, Pinnacle Airlines, Colgan Air – the company which trained the pilots operating the ill-fated flight – and Bombardier Aerospace, the Canada-based company that manufactured the aircraft. 

The lawsuit seeks unspecified financial damages for Susan Wehle’s death on behalf of her sons, Jonah and Jacob Mink, as well as compensation for any pain and suffering by Susan Wehle’s as the plane went down. 

“For a measurable period of time, the plane flew out of control, violently moved in unexpected directions, dived, rolled, inverted and subjected the passengers and contents to unusual g-forces,” the lawsuit elaborated. 

Susan Wehle, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, was a cantor at a synagogue and had also performed in theatre companies in New York and Chicago. 

Media reports said that attorneys for Susan Wehle alleged that the pilot of the plane owned by Continental Airlines – the airline based in Houston, Texas, the United States – might have “overacted to an automated warning on board the plane about ice on the wings.” The attorneys also argued that the pilot might have been violating airline rules for operating the plane on autopilot under such icy, wintry conditions. 

The suit further alleged that “flying the commuter plane on autopilot allowed signs of trouble to be concealed until it was too late” and that the doomed plane’s de-icing equipment was “outdated and failed to clear ice adequately from the wings, leading to the crash.”