Although heartened by the turnout at last month’s Regional Airline Association Convention, held May 18 to 21 at the Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City, the RAA could do nothing to lift the pall that the NTSB hearings on the February 12 crash of
Colgan Air Flight 3407 and the generally gloomy economic environment would cast over the annual event. Indeed, far weightier concerns than exhibitor numbers and buyer attendance preoccupied the RAA and its airline members during marathon board and president’s council meetings, both of which lasted all day and well into the evening of May 19.
The fallout from the crash turned meetings where general housekeeping items would have normally dominated the morning agendas into far more focused affairs, where nearly all of the association’s 32 member airlines gathered to start formulating a strategy for confronting an inevitable grilling from Congress during hearings scheduled for this month.
