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A Virginia company operated the plane that crashed late last night near Buffalo, N.Y., killing 49 people.
Manassas-based Colgan Air Inc., descendant of the company founded in 1965 by Charles J. Colgan Sr., the senior member of the Virginia Senate, was operating the plane for Continental Connection, which was flying between Newark Liberty International Airport and Buffalo Niagara International Airport when the crash occurred about 10:20 p.m.
Continental Connection flight 3407 was a Bombardier Q400 Dash 8, a turboprop that seats 70-80 passengers.
Colgan said last night's flight was carrying 44 passengers and four crew members. Everyone on the plane was killed, as was one person on the ground.
"At this time, the full resources of Colgan Air's accident response team are being mobilized and will be devoted to cooperating with all authorities responding to the accident and to contacting family members and providing assistance to them," Colgan said in a statement this morning.
Colgan said it was working with local authorities to confirm the identities of those who were on flight 3407.
Colgan said up a telephone line for relatives and friends of those traveling on the flight. The line was (800) 621-3263.
Colgan Air is a Manassas company that began operations in 1965 as the fixed-base operator at the airport there.
The company, now a subsidiary of Pinnacle Airlines Corp., was founded in 1965 by Colgan Sr., a Democrat from Prince William County, with 16 stockholders.
In 1970, the company began scheduled flights between Manassas and Dulles and Poughkeepsie, N.Y., under contract with IBM, which had been located in Manassas. By 1986, the company was operating nine planes to 12 cities from National and Dulles, according to its Web site.
In 1986, Colgan was sold to Presidential Airlines. When Presidential went out of business in 1991, Colgan and his son, Mike, organized Colgan Air and resumed operations with one plane. Colgan went on to operate with Continental Airlines, US Airways and United Express before it was acquired last year by Pinnacle Airlines Corp.
According to its Web site, the company operates 38 SAAB 340 and 15 Q400 aircraft and employs more than 1,300. In 2007 it served more than 2.5 million passengers, the company said.
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