Comair CRJ crashes in Kentucky

[gli77]

Humility from airline pilots, there is a first.

To simply say "oh well mistakes happen" is completely unacceptable. The two up front should be held liable, it goes with the responsibility they hold. God knows how much we hear about responsibility when it comes time to negotiate new contracts, so here is the flip side.

The rest of us should take note from someone elses error and check aircraft heading against the runway clearance heading next flight. One more personal note that may prevent an accident.

[Mitch Cronin]

To simply say "oh well mistakes happen" is completely unacceptable.

... it cannot be unacceptable. It's simply an acknowledgment of reality. ... as distasteful as reality can be.

Those with fewer grey hairs and a little less time doing things may not have discovered their own fallibility yet, but if they keep doing things, they'll all eventually learn that particular reality.... and thence completely understand the plethora of safeguards in use in places where mistakes are so costly.

[RobMac]

I've been lurking here for quite some time, but never felt the need to comment except for now.

While alot about this accident remains unknown, there are a few things I think you all will agree upon. This was obviously pilot error.

Both pilots knew where they were (which airport) and how much runway they needed for takeoff.

They had the airport plate/diagram, and one of them would have looked at the plates at some point prior to take off. The pilot(s) would have noted that only one of the two runways was long enough, the second one was too short. If they were given the wrong runway they should have known that this was a mistake.

They would have confirmed that the runway they were lined up on by looking at the large numbers painted on it or perhaps a sign, or by looking at their compass etc. Standard stuff.

This glaring error cost a bunch of people their lifes. Did the pilots make this mistake on purpose, of course not, but they are/were responsible.

This was not a minor mistake, this was a big obvious in your face F***up.

All make mistakes, but some make bigger ones than others, most live to learn from them, some don't.

[bronson]

Used to be that just about every checklist had "gyros" in the line up check but it seems we are getting away from that more and more. Hard to use the wrong runway if you are comparing headings prior to power up. Maybe this is a case for returning to the old ways?

[CAL]

maybe we should stop trying to go so fast and do the line-up checks when we are lined up and not on the backtrack. I am not making any assumptions about this accident I am in shock by it and my heart goes out...but where I work Captains rush through check lists like its going out of style...I dont believe a word they say and after each item I am checking myself visually...pisses some of them off but oh well...
I hope it was fast....rest in peace all....

[bizjet_mania]

Its seems at the big airports with more and more traffic, alot of the pre-takeoff checks are rushed. Either you depart or you hold short for another 10-15 minutes. Its especially worse at busy airports that dont have parallel runways. Of course there is no excuse, but the increase in traffic is adding to the stress and to procedures being rushed or overlooked.

[WHIPPER]

To WHIPPER @ TROUBLESHIT( OOPS TROUBLESHOT) just came in from 6 hours on a CRJ 100. Very sad but you guys who I am sure are not professionals with 6-8 years of jet time really piss me off. Have you never made a mistake. With my 18 years of flying my first thought was there but for the grace of god go I . Yes I have taken off from the wrong runwAY IN yxd AND ONE OTHER LOCATION. It can happen and the so called legal stand up with your 4-5 hour rest is the place to lay the blame. My first thought was how easily this could happen. Just pray you are as perfect as you think you are; and if you are that perfect then stay the heck out off my flightdeck.
Cherrs and condolences to the family of the the crew and passengers.

WTF? Don't throw me in the boat with this guy trying to crucify the pilots. I simply said that it was a stupid mistake to make, and it was. An easy mistake to make, but a stupid one just the same. Obviously fatigue seems to be a factor in this case, but it just goes to show how we pilots must bring our A game every time we go flying. Am I perfect? No. Did I say I was? No. I will, however, admit when I make mistakes and, Lord willing, the mistakes I make will not result in the loss of innocent peoples lives.

[ajet32]

Whipper:
My bad , and I apologize, late night after a day much like these fellow had and we made it thru without trouble. Not the case for these chaps and their passengers. Hope we can all learn from this mistake so we won't make it ourselves.

[WHIPPER]

Whipper:
My bad , and I apologize, late night after a day much like these fellow had and we made it thru without trouble. Not the case for these chaps and their passengers. Hope we can all learn from this mistake so we won't make it ourselves.

No problem. I can understand how we're all a little edgy after a tragedy like this. I personally know two people affected by aviation related disasters involving deaths in the last 3 weeks alone. We are all human and something like this can happen to anyone. Like you said, we can all learn from this and hopefully companies that don't reference runway heading with instruments in their SOP's will add it in. Fly safe...

[Blastor]

Taxi route changed a week before plane crash in Kentucky

JEFFREY MCMURRAY

Associated Press

LEXINGTON, Ky. — The taxi route for commercial jets using Blue Grass Airport's main runway was altered a week before Comair Flight 5191 took the wrong runway and crashed, killing all but one of the 50 people aboard, the airport's director said Monday.

Both the old and new taxiways cross over the shorter general aviation runway where the commuter jet tried to take off early Sunday, Blue Grass Airport Executive Director Michael Gobb told The Associated Press.

The runway repaving was completed late on the previous Sunday, Mr. Gobb said. It wasn't clear if the Comair pilots aboard Flight 5191 had been there since the change. Comair operates that regular 6 a.m. weekend flight to Atlanta from Lexington, but another commuter airline takes over that commute during the week.

“It's slightly different than it used to be,” said Charlie Monette, president of Aero-Tech flight school based at the airport. “Could there have been some confusion associated with that? That's certainly a possibility.”

The National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the crash, said it was reviewing runway and taxiway markings as part of the investigation.

Recorded conversations between the plane's cockpit and the single person staffing the control tower before dawn Sunday morning mentioned only the airport's main commercial strip, Runway 22, NTSB member Debbie Hersman said.

Somehow, the commuter jet ended up on the airport's other runway instead, Runway 26 — a cracked surface meant for small planes that was much too short for Comair's twin-engine jet.

What followed was the worst U.S. plane disaster since 2001.

“The take-off began, and the aircraft continued to accelerate until the recording stopped,” Ms. Hersman said.

The plane clipped trees, then quickly crashed in a field and burst into flames, killing everyone aboard but a critically injured co-pilot who was pulled from the cracked cockpit.

Information retrieved from the cockpit voice recorder indicated preflight preparations were “consistent with normal operations,” Ms. Hersman said.

“Air traffic control and the flight crew planned for a takeoff from runway 22,” Ms. Hersman said. “The F.D.R. (flight data recorder) and the evidence on scene indicates the crew took off from Runway 26.”

Live and learn from others CRM misfortune. But do not condemn

[Troubleshot]

This is not the first time someone tried to take off at the wrong runway at this airport. From Avweb:

... it was at least the second
time an airliner crew had initiated a takeoff roll on the shorter
runway. According to ASN's report of Sunday's accident, an airliner
lined up for takeoff on the shorter Runway 26 13 years ago but a
controller caught the error and cancelled the clearance. A report of
the 1993 incident, reported on the NASA Aviation Safety Reporting
System and quoted by ASN says, "Possible contributing factors were
poor visibility and wx (rain), confusing rwy intxn and twr's request
for an immediate takeoff."

As far as "Mr Perfect", the troubleshooting AME is concerned, would you like me to start listing mistakes that AME's have made? I personally have been on the receiving end of some really fun ones, such as the elevator jamming during a vertical downline

Was he canned? he should have been. I never said AME's don't make mistakes but you don't see me defending guys on here saying "I could see how that could happen" even though they have fucked-up royal and have cost several lives do you......

[Mitch Cronin]

Troubleshot... I don't know any delicate way to put this... You're sounding like a very inexperienced young pup. Those who've been around a while have had a little more humble kicked into 'em somehow... Often through mistakes of their own - mistakes which may have been equally serious, yet through better luck, haven't ended up being the final slice of cheese to line up all the holes and allow a disaster to follow.

You obviously haven't been there yet, but if you stick with this line of work for long, you probably will.... Here's hoping your next screw-up isn't posted on these pages for all to sneer at.

[talkinghead]

Was he canned? he should have been. I never said AME's don't make mistakes but you don't see me defending guys on here saying "I could see how that could happen" even though they have fucked-up royal and have cost several lives do you......

Ya, lets fire everyone who fucked-up (as you put it) that will make everyone/thing a lot more safe.

[cyyz]

I might have missed it, but how many landings have we had on taxiways? By A/C, WJ, Jetsgo, and the numerous charter outfits??

Luckily most of those haven't ended in death...

So all you experts that take off on the right runway yet land on the wrong one are just as bad. (I don't need to go into flying clapped out equipment and flying below Reg fuel requirments)

If it was pearson they would have taken off normally on any of the runways that ranges from 9k-11,120. It wasn't pearson, and they were fubar... A mistake has happened...

The runway repaving was completed late on the previous Sunday, Mr. Gobb said. It wasn't clear if the Comair pilots aboard Flight 5191 had been there since the change. Comair operates that regular 6 a.m. weekend flight to Atlanta from Lexington, but another commuter airline takes over that commute during the week.

“It's slightly different than it used to be,”

Perhaps complacency kicked in? Pilot : "well we turned left here last week and took off, shouldn't be a problem this week."

Would the lynch mob go and lynch themselves first, unless ofcourse, they never did fly below wx min, below fuel min, over wt, and lord knows what other regs could have been broken.....

[Troubleshot]

Troubleshot... I don't know any delicate way to put this... You're sounding like a very inexperienced young pup. Those who've been around a while have had a little more humble kicked into 'em somehow... Often through mistakes of their own - mistakes which may have been equally serious, yet through better luck, haven't ended up being the final slice of cheese to line up all the holes and allow a disaster to follow.

You obviously haven't been there yet, but if you stick with this line of work for long, you probably will.... Here's hoping your next screw-up isn't posted on these pages for all to sneer at.

Mitch, I'm not on the brink of retirement but I just didn't get my log book filled out ethier, but I stand by my view on this matter. Yes it sucks that lives were lost and I wish it had never happened but come on man! this was a brutal error that could have been prevented it ONE of the TWO pilots realized were the hell he was. If the independant AME on my alieron install doesn't see that my nut is not on my bolt and we kill 50+ people then we deserve to be "sneered" at on a public forum

[Mitch Cronin]

... I'm not so sure I wouldn't think I deserved death if I'd done that Troubleshot...
But since I can see a little clearer at the moment than one caught in the horrid emotions of such events... I think those hypothetical AME's, as well as this flight crew, deserve a little effort to understand what may have helped lead them to their errors... We are, after all, only human, and thus we are subject to a number of fairly common contributors to the makings of human error. Have you had any human factors training yet?

Yep, it could have been prevented if.... _______. Fill in the blank. Like all accidents any one of a number of very simple things would fit in that blank. But none did. The trick is to have several things filling that blank, so no one simple mistake can have this result.... because we know we're only human and will occasionally fail to do our part to fill in that blank.

[Axial Flow]

It always sucks to see people get on the lynching band wagon after an accident as if they have never screwed up and by the grace of God didn't end up dead themselves.

But if you must post about others and how you could never see yourself doing something so stupid, I hope never to read on here the first time you do.

[sprucemonkey]

Used to be that just about every checklist had "gyros" in the line up check but it seems we are getting away from that more and more. Hard to use the wrong runway if you are comparing headings prior to power up. Maybe this is a case for returning to the old ways?

Exactly. I fly an old 50 with steam up front and another aircraft with glass. You've got to set the headings on the rwy prior to takeoff otherwise you're screwed. The advanced cockpit is supposed to make things safer and reduce workload. It does, but it seems to breed complacency as well.

[sky's the limit]

Not looking good for the pilots at all....

LEXINGTON, Kentucky (CNN) -- An unlighted runway and a newly redesigned taxiway were two of the clues investigators studied Monday as they tried to determine why Comair Flight 5191 crashed Sunday morning in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49 of the 50 people onboard.

The National Transportation Safety Board said the 50-seat jet was cleared to take off from the 7,000-foot Runway 22 at Blue Grass Airport, but instead turned onto Runway 26, which is only half as long -- too short to accommodate a commercial jet.

The short runway was equipped with lights, but they were inoperative at the time Flight 5191 took off, said Debbie Hersman, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board heading the investigation.

"We are seeking to determine exactly what the status of those lights are, what their function was, who had access to them, and all of those questions are what our investigators are trying to find the answers to today," she said at a briefing in Lexington Monday. (Watch latest findings by NTSB -- 8:23)

Asked if it was unusual for a pilot to take off before dawn on an unlighted runway, Hersman said, "That's a question that is central to our investigation and one that we're going to try to answer." (Map of airport layout)


STL

[talkinghead]

.....umm how dark is it in LEXINGTON, Kentucky at 6:00 in the morn, at this time of year

[Axial Flow]

.....umm how dark is it in LEXINGTON, Kentucky at 6:00 in the morn, at this time of year

Legally Dark....


Sunday Sun Rise and Sunset for KLEX-Bluegrass


08/27/06 Sunday 7:04 20:16

[golden hawk]

Crash probe: Ky. runway route changed

By JEFFREY McMURRAY, Associated Press Writer 19 minutes ago

Investigators in the Comair jet crash that killed 49 people are looking into whether changes made to a taxiway during a repaving project a week ago confused the pilot and caused him to turn onto the wrong runway.

Federal aviation officials said Monday they were also looking at such things as runway lights, markings and signs for clues to what could have misled the pilots, as well as anything else that changed the configuration or appearance of the airport.

Both the old and new taxiway routes cross over the short runway where Flight 5191 tried to take off before crashing into a grassy field and bursting into flame, Airport Executive Director Michael Gobb told The Associated Press.

"It's slightly different than it used to be," said Charlie Monette, president of Aero-Tech flight school at the airport. "Could there have been some confusion associated with that? That's certainly a possibility."

It was unclear whether the Comair pilots had been to the airport since the changes to the taxi route.

Lowell Wiley, a flight instructor who flies almost every day out Lexington, said in an interview that he was confused by the redirected taxi route when he was with a student Friday taking off from the main runway.

"When we taxied out, we did not expect to see a barrier strung across the old taxiway," Wiley said. "It was a total surprise."

Investigators planned to use a high truck to simulate the pilots' view of the runways and taxiways in their efforts to determine why the jet turned onto a shorter runway before dawn Sunday. The lone survivor was a critically injured co-pilot who was pulled from the cracked cockpit.

Authorities also planned to prepare a full report on the pilots, including what they did on and off duty for several days before the crash, which was the worst U.S. plane disaster since 2001.

All discussions between the plane and the control tower were about a takeoff from the main strip, Runway 22, which is 7,000 feet long, National Transportation Safety Board member Debbie Hersman.

Somehow, the commuter jet ended up on Runway 26 instead — a cracked surface about 3,500 feet long that forms an X with the main runway and is meant only for small planes. Aviation experts say the CRJ-100 would have needed 5,000 feet to get airborne.

Both runways at Blue Grass Airport have lights along the edges, although the ones on the longer runway are much higher intensity. The long runway also has lights in the center. In the days leading up to the crash, those runway center lights were not working, according to a notice the Federal Aviation Administration sent to airlines.

Hersman told a news conference that investigators were "looking into reports about any work that had been done at the airport, what might have approved, what might have been proposed and what might have been completed. Anything that might have changed the configuration or appearances of the airport."

According to the NTSB database, there have been four accidents caused by pilots taking off on the wrong runway worldwide since 1982.

"It's not common," Bill Waldock, aviation safety professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Arizona. "It's right up there with lightning strikes."

Air traffic controllers are not responsible for making sure pilots are on the right runway, said John Nance, a pilot and aviation analyst.

"You clear him for takeoff and that's the end of it," Nance said. "It's not the duty of the controller to baby-sit every flight. It would have been great if he or she had, but they have other duties up there."

The FAA said a second air traffic controller would be added to the weekend overnight shifts at the airport beginning next weekend. Agency spokeswoman Laura Brown declined to give a reason for the decision.

According to a NASA database, a twin-engine jet taxied to the wrong runway at Lexington in November 1993 and the tower called to tell them about their mistake. The pilot reported that the confusing runway intersection contributed to the incident.

The NTSB will re-create the pilots' last 72 hours, focusing on fatigue and stress issues, Waldock said. Agents will review how many flights the pilots made, how much rest they had, any medication they took and even whether they had coffee that morning.

Hersman said the NTSB has interviewed the lone controller on duty at the time, reviewed records and transcribed the data and voice recorders. She said information retrieved from the cockpit voice recorder indicates that the preflight preparations had been "consistent with normal operations."

At the airport, flights were back to normal Monday. The daily 6 a.m. Lexington-to-Atlanta flight took off safely.

"Obviously there is some anxiety when something like this happens, but it is not something that would stop me from going," said Mark Carroll, 47, a computer consultant from Lexington who was boarding the flight to Atlanta.

The bodies of the 49 victims were taken to the medical examiner's office in Frankfort for autopsies. Kentucky's chief medical examiner, Dr. Tracy Corey, was uncertain how long it will take to identify all the victims. Comair had not released a passenger manifest and said it was seeking permission from victims' families to release the names.

Medical examiners used medical and dental records, personal effects and in some cases fingerprints to help identify bodies, Corey said.

Some victims were starting vacations, while others were returning to work after traveling.

Attorney Les Morris and his wife, Kay Craig Morris, had been headed to an Alaskan cruise. Marcie Thomason, an accountant in Washington, D.C., was heading home after returning to her native Kentucky for a wedding shower in her honor.

Thomason normally flew back to Washington out of Louisville.

"I guess she wanted to get back early and took the flight to Atlanta," said J. David Smith, a friend of her family.

Among other victims were a newlywed couple starting their honeymoon, a director of Habitat for Humanity International, an owner of a thoroughbred horse farm and a University of Kentucky official.

The only survivor, first officer James M. Polehinke, remained in critical condition Monday at the University of Kentucky Hospital. Police officer Bryan Jared burned his own arms reaching into the broken cockpit to pull him out.

The crash in Lexington was the deadliest in the U.S. since Nov. 12, 2001, when American Airlines Flight 587 plunged into a residential neighborhood in New York City, killing 265 people, including five on the ground.

___

Associated Press writers Leslie Miller in Washington, D.C., Samira Jafari and Duncan Mansfield in Lexington, Joe Biesk in Frankfort, Brett Barrouquere in Louisville and Lisa Cornwell in Cincinnati contributed to this report.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060829/ap_ ... &printer=1

[Go Guns]

A tragedy is what it was. My condolences to friends and family....

[JigglyBus]

I don't want to get into this conversation, as it's getting out of hand.

However, someone mentioned that it was 'legally dark' because sunset was at 7:04am. I would like to disagree with this statement, as night legally ended at 6:37am at KLEX the day in question.

Whether or not that has anything to do with anything, should be left to the investigators to decide.

[co-joe]

So already the "events cascade" is coming to light. Not enough sleep, unlit runway where they probably couldn't see the far end, dawn when there are no shadows for definition, a change to the taxiways, thresholds near to eachother with similar alignment, atc missed it or wasn't able to help in time, and sadly yes two pilots made a mistake.

Not offering any excuses here just trying to understand how I can learn from this and be a better safer pilot myself.

Its only been a few days, I bet a few more contributory factors come to light before the report comes out.