On September 11, 1991, Continental Express Flight 2574, an Embraer EMB 120 Brasilia carrying 14 people, broke apart while approaching Houston’s Intercontinental Airport, killing everyone aboard. The NTSB found that maintenance workers had removed screws from the horizontal stabilizer the previous night and failed to replace them after a shift change. It also cited airline maintenance and inspection failures, along with the FAA’s failure to detect and verify compliance with approved procedures, as contributing factors. Months later, the same airline experienced another incident after bolts were removed from a wing panel, reinforcing the NTSB’s concern that inspections had not overcome a dangerous corporate culture.
NTSB member John Lauber said the probable cause included Continental Express management’s failure to establish a culture that enforced approved maintenance and quality-assurance procedures. The crash helped make “safety culture” a central issue at the 1997 National Summit on Transportation Safety. Congress responded with the Wendell H. Ford Aviation Investment and Reform Act, signed by President Bill Clinton on April 5, 2000. AIR 21 authorized roughly $56 billion in additional outlays for 2000–2004, created aviation-industry whistleblower protections, targeted fraudulently represented aircraft parts, and expanded FAA safety and oversight requirements.
