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Workers clear debris from Continental Connection Flight 3407, which crashed Feb. 12, 2009, in Clarence, N.Y. The plane crashed as it approached the Buffalo airport, killing all 49 people on board and one on the ground.

Published: February 09, 2010

The crash of Continental Connection Flight 3407 last February — in which 50 deaths were attributed to pilot error — exposes widespread safety problems linked to lax regulation, according to an investigation by PBS.

Among the risks found in the Frontline report: long hours and low pay at regional carriers, where some pilots become captains with less than a year of experience.

Outsourcing Flights — And Liability

As PBS correspondent Miles O'Brien tells NPR's Renee Montagne, the incident highlights the dangers of a trend that has grown in the past 15 years: the outsourcing of short routes from large carriers to more obscure local airlines. The problem, he says, is that large airlines do little to ensure their business partners' safety standards.

For instance, Continental 3407 was operated by Colgan Air. But the relationship between the two partner airlines — one large and well-known, the other small and regional — is mostly symbolic.

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