Flight 3407 families renew fight to preserve aviation safety measures

At a House hearing, they looked on with displeasure as the new Republican leader of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee pressed to alter the requirement that copilots have 1,500 hours of experience before flying a passenger airliner. And afterward, the family members gathered with allies old and new for a press conference in front of the Capitol, where they made clear they would fight as hard to preserve that safety law as they did to get it passed.

Rep. Sam Graves, the Missouri Republican leading the charge to trim the so-called 1,500 hour rule, has said Congress reacted with emotion in passing those safety measures.

John Kausner of Clarence, one of the leading members of the Flight 3407 group, acknowledged as much.

“For me, it was emotional. I lost my daughter,” said Kausner, whose daughter Ellyce was one of 50 people who died when the exhausted, undertrained pilots of Continental Connection Flight 3407 bumbled through a flight emergency and crashed their plane into a house in Clarence in February 2009.

Gesturing to others who lost loved ones in the crash, Kausner then said: “Yeah, it was emotional. Lost her sister. Lost her husband. Lost her husband. Lost his daughter. Lost her husband. Lost his son. … So yeah, we were emotional, believe it. But we weren’t irrational. We got a law passed. It was good and it has worked ever since.”