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Chatty and tired, a pair of pilots crashed a perfectly flyable aircraft nearly a year ago, slamming their Canadian-built Bombardier Q400 turboprop into a house as they approached Buffalo's airport, according to investigators who painted a frightening picture of incompetence and inattention in the cockpit.

It was pilot "complacency and confusion that resulted in catastrophe," Deborah Hersman, chairwoman of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, said yesterday in outlining the findings of the investigation into the Feb. 12 crash, which exposed questionable practices by regional airlines hiring low-paid pilots.

Although the flight was branded as a Continental Connection, it was being flown by Colgan Air, a division of Pinnacle Airlines Corp.

The captain, Marvin Renslow, had repeatedly failed airmanship tests. His co-pilot, Rebecca Shaw, was living with her parents on the West Coast, having earned barely $15,000 the previous year, and was sleeping in "crash pads" with other financially strapped pilots. Prior to reporting for duty onboard Continental Flight 3407 from Newark to Buffalo, she had flown across the country to get to work.

The pilots entered contradictory flight information into their onboard system. Ms. Shaw was sending text messages before takeoff. They chatted about their social lives and considered flying lower because Ms. Shaw's sinuses were bothering her.

Then as the twin-turboprop descended and slowed in preparation for landing in Buffalo, neither pilot noticed a dangerous decay in flying speed.

When an alarm sounded warning that the aircraft was flying too slowly, Capt. Renslow pulled back on the control stick - the opposite of what he was supposed to do - pointing the nose skyward and slowing the aircraft even more. He pushed on the throttles, but not enough to engage full thrust.

As alarms sounded and the aircraft stalled - losing so much speed that the reduced airflow over the wings no longer provided sufficient lift - Capt. Renfrew twice more pulled back hard instead of lowering the nose, which would have increased the speed and averted disaster.

"There was time to evaluate the situation and initiate a recovery," said the lead investigator into the crash, which killed all 49 passengers and crew and one person on the ground. "It wasn't a split-second thing."

The safety board doesn't assign blame so there will be no finding of pilot error. But the probe underscores the fact that long-standing warnings about safety standards at regional airlines have been mostly ignored.

"Today is Groundhog Day, and I feel like we are in that movie," a clearly irked Ms. Hersman said, referring to the 1993 Bill Murray movie about a Pittsburgh weatherman who repeatedly lives through the same day.

"We have made recommendations time after time after time. They haven't been heeded by the FAA," she said, referring to the Federal Aviation Administration.

The last six fatal airline accidents in the United States have involved so-called regional carriers, flying small jets and turboprops.

Although their pilots are among the youngest and most inexperienced in the industry, regional crews often fly long, gruelling days, with multiple flights and short hops as they try and build the flight time needed to be hired by the big airlines.

Training, time off, rest periods and cockpit discipline have been repeatedly cited by investigators probing regional-airline crashes.

"History is repeating itself," Ms. Hersman said. "There are things in this accident we've seen before."