A call from air traffic control (ATC) captured the attention of 10 firefighters on duty at Buffalo Niagara (New York, U.S.) International Airport Fire Department (BNIA-FD). The message for aircraft rescue and fire fighting (ARFF) at about 2220 on Thursday, Feb. 12, 2009, said that a regional turboprop established on the localizer of the Runway 23 instrument landing system could be down somewhere between the outer marker and Harris Hill, near Akron, approximately 12 nm (22 km) northeast of the airport.
All the firefighters went to their trucks, but for about a minute they sat idle in the firehouse with no place to go. That gave them an eerie feeling, listening to their radios as ATC repeatedly called “Colgan 3407” and got no answer. The flight crew of a nearby airliner flying in instrument meteorological conditions had told ATC that the missing aircraft could not be seen visually or on the display of their traffic-alert and collision avoidance system.1
Some of the f…
