After a loss, this coach has a cause that goes on

Kuwik advocates improved pilot safety after girlfriend's death

One day, Kevin Kuwik hopes, recruiting will be a crucial part of his job as a college basketball head coach. On Thursday, Kuwik spent nine hours doing exactly that, recruiting members of Congress to support a cause that has consumed him for months.

For the 10th time since the beginning of May, Kuwik and several others came to represent the passengers of Continental Connection Flight 3407 and solicit support for legislation that would enhance aviation safety regulations. The legislation already has passed in the House of Representatives but has not yet made it to the Senate, not with the health care debate consuming nearly all conversation on Capitol Hill.

So Kuwik, the video coordinator of the Ohio State men's basketball program and a former assistant coach at Ohio University, led a group of grieving victims into a congressional office building to sit in on a Senate aviation subcommittee hearing chaired by one of his chief targets for the day -- Senator Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.). Afterward, they held a makeshift news conference outside the hearing room before a series of meetings with congressional staffers whose bosses' influence would greatly benefit their cause.

Kuwik guided every discussion on Thursday, gesticulating with his hands to emphasize his points. His voice boomed with confidence and poise. Kuwik compared his task on Thursday to a duty more familiar in the context of his everyday job: recruiting.

"The homework you do on a recruit, identifying who the key people are around them, doing all the background checking -- when you have that official visit or you have that phone conversation, it goes the way you need it to go," said Kuwik, who wore a purple tie and the picture of a lost loved one attached to a purple ribbon on his left lapel. "You have to touch on the right points and hit the right hot spots. It's the same deal with this."

En route from Newark on Feb. 12, Flight 3407 crashed into a neighborhood area about five miles short of Buffalo Niagara International Airport. Kuwik's girlfriend, Lorin Maurer, and 48 other people aboard the Bombadier Dash 8 Q400 turboprop all perished, along with one person on the ground. Preliminary National Transportation Safety Board hearings in May focused on whether the plane's two pilots were properly trained, and whether factors such as fatigue may have affected their performance.

Potential causes

According to transcripts of the cockpit voice recorder on Flight 3407, the flight captain, Marvin Renslow, told his first officer that he'd gotten his job with only 625 hours of flight experience. The first officer, Rebecca Shaw, said she had never flown in the icy conditions that were prevalent.

Investigators say Renslow pulled the plane's nose up when alerted by an emergency stall warning; he should have pushed the nose down to gain speed. Shaw, 24, was sleep-deprived after riding 2,817 miles in cockpit jump seats the day before. Both noticed ice accumulating on the windshield yet continued to talk about past flights, the co-pilot's head congestion and other trivial matters, even as the plane descended below 10,000 feet -- the point when federal aviation requirements call for a "sterile cockpit," in which conversation unrelated to the flight must cease.

Kuwik and his group are proposing that the minimum flight time required of a commercial pilot be elevated to 1,500 hours and amassed through different qualitative assignments, such as navigating through bad weather. Currently, only one of the two pilots in a commercial cockpit must own an Airline Transport Pilot license. Kuwik's team wants it mandated that both pilots in a cockpit have ATP licenses.

Airlines oppose the provision because paying two ATP-certified pilots per flight costs more than paying one. Flight schools oppose the provision because it would prohibit them from utilizing one of their chief marketing tools: the promise of students finding employment immediately upon graduation.

Finding a connection

Prior to initially meeting with Dorgan in May, Kuwik discovered that Dorgan's 23-year-old daughter had died after complications from heart surgery in 1994. So he brought in three fathers of female passengers on Flight 3407, and within 10 minutes a connection was established.

"You've got to be respectful," Kuwik said. "We want him on our team. We've got to find a way where we can get him to a point where he might say no, but just don't say heck no."

Kuwik's group entered its meeting with Dorgan on Thursday armed with an understanding of each side's arguments. He'd already talked to Dorgan staffers, who provided a sense of what the senator was thinking. The goal was not to change Dorgan's mind completely, but merely to get him leaning in Kuwik's direction.

"It went way better than we thought it would," Kuwik said afterward as he left the building. "Senator Dorgan said, 'I fly regional airplanes all the time back to North Dakota, and I'm worried about who's in the cockpit.' "

Kuwik returned Thursday night to Columbus, Ohio, where he immediately began breaking down film from an Ohio State scrimmage. He'll be back, though, pursuing recruits until his goal is met.