First, there’s good news. America has celebrated 11 years of the safest period of commercial airlines since airlines began. While we are acknowledging this amazing, impressive and wonderful news, it’s also helpful to realize that while we probably can’t improve on the numbers, the real challenge is how— and whether we can maintain that record.

And one measurement of our chances for that go back 10 years ago this week,  to that last fatal crash — of the Continental Connection flight between Newark Liberty International Airport and Buffalo Niagara International Airport in New York on February 12, 2009.

But Continental 3407 never made it to Buffalo.

And the reasons why are still with us today.

A recap: the flight was first delayed two hours, departing at 9:18 p.m. But shortly after it finally took off, it encountered snow and icing on the wings.

Then, moments after the flight was cleared for the Runway 23 approach to Buffalo, it disappeared from the controller’s radar screens. This is what the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) later discovered: once the flight was cleared, the pilots lowered the landing gear and extended the flaps five degrees. And the plane slowed down to about 145 knots. Then the flaps extended to 15 degrees — all standard procedure. Airspeed slowed to 135 knots. But ice was building up on the wings, and just six seconds later, as the plane slowed to 131 knots, the plane’s stick shaker activated, warning the pilots of an impending stall. And what did the captain do? He abruptly pulled back on the control column, instead of lowering the nose and applying full power. The fatal result: the nose of the Bombardier Q400 turboprop pitched up and the speed slowed even more. Despite a system in the plane designed to automatically push the nose down, the pilot overrode that system and continued to pull back. The co-pilot, without talking to the captain, retracted the flaps, which sealed their fate.

The final NTSB report, based on both the cockpit voice recorder and the planes flight data recorder, indicated that the plane then pitched up 31 degrees, then pitched down 25 degrees, then rolled left violently at 46 degrees and then snapped back in the opposite direction at 105 degrees. It was over. The plane rapidly lost altitude and crashed, bursting into flames as the fuel tanks ruptured on impact. All 49 passengers and crew — as well as one person in the house — were killed.

I covered the story at the time as well as the post-crash investigation by the NTSB. The NTSB’s conclusions as to the probable cause were, to say the least, disturbing and alarming.

The NTSB determined the crew had not been properly trained in the aircraft. The pilot had only accumulated 111 total hours in the Q400, and had failed a number of recurrent tests (including three check rides)  but was still allowed to fly. The young co-pilot was a 24-year-old woman being paid the salary equivalent of a Walmart greeter who couldn’t afford to live in her Newark base, so she had commuted hours before from her home in Seattle, where she lived with her mother, in the jump seat of a FedEx cargo plane.

To make matters worse, the crash called into focus passenger confusion about code shared flights and even more important, the existence of two different sets of safety standards between its mainline and regional carriers.

Many of the passengers on Flight 3407 were traveling under the assumption they were on a Continental flight. The plane was listed as a Continental flight. It had Continental markings and livery on the aircraft. They received Continental frequent flyer miles. And yet, the aircraft was actually operated by a regional carrier – Colgan Air, doing business as the Continental Connection. And as the NTSB reported, the flight crews for Colgan — as well as the airline itself — did not have to perform to the more rigid safety rules of their mainline official name— Continental (or United, or Delta or American). As a regional carrier, it fell under different, less stringent regulations dealing with pilot training.

It wasn’t long before families of the accident victims formed a group and lobbied the U.S. Congress to enact more stringent regulations for regional carriers, and to improve the scrutiny of safe operating procedures and the working conditions of pilots. While the NTSB made similar recommendations, it was up to the FAA to make policy. But while the agency did essentially nothing to address the causes of the crash (improper stall recovery on the part of the pilot and fatigue on the part of the co-pilot), the FAA did increase the number of minimum hours of flight time — and improved training — required to be a pilot for regional carriers. At one point, the FAA was considering raising the minimum number of hours to 1,500.

That was 10 years ago… So where are we today? A number of regional carriers have ceased to operate – one reason, is that by continuing to pay such low salaries to its captains, it couldn’t field enough pilots with the required minimum hours who would fly for those salaries. And what happened to Colgan Air? Pinnacle Airlines phased out the name and Colgan, then operating for United Airlines (as United Express), ceased to operate on September 5, 2012.

And now, 10 years after the Colgan airline crash, some might question whether we’ve applied any of the lessons we learned from that tragedy, and that we might be right back to where we started. Many of the remaining regional carriers have been quietly and strongly lobbying the FAA to reduce the number of minimum hours required for pilots to fly in the left seat.