The weeks following the crash were frustrating for Kevin Kuwik and the family of his girlfriend, Lorin Maurer, one of 50 people who died Feb. 12 when Flight 3407 went down in Buffalo, N.Y.

"We were right in the middle of basketball season," said Kuwik, the basketball coach at Butler University. His girlfriend's father started sending letters to Congress, asking for an investigation into what went wrong that winter night, but was having difficulty contacting a lawmaker.

Eventually, they started researching who would oversee such an investigation, which led them to North Dakota Sen. Byron Dorgan, chairman of the Subcommittee on Aviation Operations, Safety and Security.

There was only one problem. Kuwik had few connections to North Dakota, except for one person: North Dakota State University basketball coach Saul Phillips.

Kuwik said he figured, after NDSU's first appearance in the NCAA tournament, "Saul's got to be like a celebrity in North Dakota."

In late April after both teams had lost in the tournament, Kuwik contacted Phillips, a longtime friend, and Phillips contacted Dorgan's office.

"Within an hour, someone from Sen. Dorgan's office called me," said Kuwik, who later traveled with the family of his deceased girlfriend to Washington to meet with Dorgan.

In a Thursday committee hearing, Dorgan told the Federal Aviation Administration to close a loophole so that pilots would be required to disclose previous flight test failures when applying to work for an airline.

"We need to fix that and fix that soon," Dorgan said in a Thursday USA Today story. "There is no reason that you can learn everything there is to know about the airplane, but not the pilot."

Revelations about the pilots flying Continental Flight 3407 surfaced in May. A report showed that the pilot of the turboprop plane had failed five pilot exams while his employer, Colgan Air, knew of only two.

"He's just been a real champion of our cause," Kuwik said of Dorgan. "He really is doing a good thing for us and everyone who flies."

(Reach reporter Brian Duggan at 223-8482 or at brian.duggan.)@bismarcktribune.com