The legacy of American Eagle flight 4184 is not free of controversy, and probably never will be. The answers to some of the questions posed in this article about the safety of the ATR will still depend on who you ask, and although I’ve tried to approach every argument with an open mind, I obviously have my own opinions that not everyone will share. Readers are free to draw conclusions that differ from mine, but I hope this article provides a solid informational basis regardless.
At the very least we can say, all controversies aside, that the tragedy at Roselawn was caused by a failure of imagination, a failure to ask, “what would happen if things were a little bit different?” The pieces of the puzzle were there, and ATR even assembled some of them, but whether due to complacency, arrogance, or disinterest, no one ever quite went far enough. The miracle of flight does not forgive these qualities — not in pilots, not in manufacturers, and not in regulators. One cannot observe an anomaly, no matter how seemingly minor, and leave it unexplained simply because it didn’t matter this time — because next time, it might, and then it will be too late. And because of that careless indifference, flight 4184 rode headlong into the valley of death, and 68 souls were lost, having been ripped from the sky as though by an invisible hand, and yet it was not the hand of god, but the hands of real people who possessed the power to change some small thing for the better, and did not do so. Now it’s up to those who have come after them to ensure it never happens again.