Yea I live in Louisville and was just entering Lexington as the Crash happend ( I was driving on Man O War )
Crazy ******.
Crazy ******.
Another thing to note is that runways, being based on compass headings, sometimes have to be re-numbered. A compass doesn't point to true north, but rather "magnetic north" which is not stationary at all, and usually floats around the arctic ocean. I believe recently, for example, it's 800-900 miles from true north. As this point moves, a runway numbered 22 (heading 220 degrees) may find itself aligned with 230 degrees, and then when that happens it becomes runway 23. They recently renumbered runways all over Alaska, and up here the compass can point as many as 30 degrees off from true north so it makes a lot of things interesting.
Another point... all runways are actually two... one in each direction, and their numbers are always 18 apart. So, a runway 2 on one end will be 20 from the other end.
blurredvision
Lifer
- Oct 19, 2000
- 17,860
- 4
- 81
Looks as if a small Cessna crashed here in Kentucky today as well, creating a bit of irony and fear in the state. 7 were aboard at the time it went down, but nothing much else is known at this point.
Mermaidman
Diamond Member
- Sep 4, 2003
- 7,987
- 93
- 91
Associated Press Note the bolded paragraph below regarding the responsibility of ATC.
LEXINGTON, Ky. - Pilots of a Comair jet that crashed on takeoff noticed there were no lights as they prepared to depart, but they didn't recognize they were headed down the wrong runway, investigators said Monday. The only survivor in the crash that killed 49 people, first officer James M. Polehinke, was piloting the plane, said Debbie Hersman, a National Transportation Safety Board member. He remained in critical condition Monday at the University of Kentucky Hospital. The cockpit voice recorder showed that the pilots were talking about the absence of lights on the runway but that they didn't report it to the lone air traffic controller in the control tower, Hersman said.
Investigators in the commuter jet crash were looking into whether the runway lights or changes made to a taxiway during a repaving project a week ago confused the pilot and caused him to turn onto the wrong runway. 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 . . .
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. Two other flights departed without problems, but 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 shorter runway is for daylight operation only, and the lights on that runway haven't worked since October 2001. 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. An employee for another airline saw the accident and told investigators that the main runway lights were lit, Hersman said.
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 . . .
LEXINGTON, Ky. - Pilots of a Comair jet that crashed on takeoff noticed there were no lights as they prepared to depart, but they didn't recognize they were headed down the wrong runway, investigators said Monday. The only survivor in the crash that killed 49 people, first officer James M. Polehinke, was piloting the plane, said Debbie Hersman, a National Transportation Safety Board member. He remained in critical condition Monday at the University of Kentucky Hospital. The cockpit voice recorder showed that the pilots were talking about the absence of lights on the runway but that they didn't report it to the lone air traffic controller in the control tower, Hersman said.
Investigators in the commuter jet crash were looking into whether the runway lights or changes made to a taxiway during a repaving project a week ago confused the pilot and caused him to turn onto the wrong runway. 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 . . .
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. Two other flights departed without problems, but 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 shorter runway is for daylight operation only, and the lights on that runway haven't worked since October 2001. 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. An employee for another airline saw the accident and told investigators that the main runway lights were lit, Hersman said.
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 . . .
iamwiz82
Lifer
- Jan 10, 2001
- 30,772
- 13
- 81
Some photos of the crash site. No gore or anything like that, but very emotional photos, I think.
http://www.heraldleaderphoto.com/featuredgalleries/featuredgalleriesindex.html
http://www.heraldleaderphoto.com/featuredgalleries/featuredgalleriesindex.html
I spoke with some volunteers that are helping. It's a gruesome scene. Coroner said it's likely people died from the impact alone and not from the fire.
rudder
Lifer
- Nov 9, 2000
- 19,441
- 86
- 91
Very sad stuff. I still can't beleive these guys would roll down an unlit runway and wonder why they passed a lit runway... and not abort the takeoff. It will be interesting to hear the cockpit voice recorder (which will probbaly never be publicly release in full) because they had to be talking about everything under the sun rather than the task at hand.
iamwiz82
Lifer
- Jan 10, 2001
- 30,772
- 13
- 81
NTSB has already released that they asked ATC about the lights being off during their takeoff roll. I think they just took things for granted, ya know?
On a side note, the crew had originally gotten on the wrong plane and were preparing that for flight before they realized their mistake. You have to wonder if they had their minds on something else.
yeah, all these little things that by themselves would most likely be a non-issue. But add them all up and you get a pilot/co-pilot going down the wrong runway.
I feel very bad for the controller, even worse for the lone 1st officer that survived.
No it's not.
Bottom line is money.
It's all about the most profit at the expense of the people.
There is no other reason why a GPS system that warns you are in the wrong direction was not aboard that plane or any other commericial plane other than pure greed.
Enjoy
Almost every aviation accident is the result of a chain of small things that go wrong. Part of being pilot in command is recognizing when a hazardous situation is developing and doing whatever is necessary to break that chain. That is drilled into pilots from day one of training. In this case, either pilot should have verified their heading indicators vs what was expected for the runway they were on.
I can tell you now what the NTSB report will say. The cause of the crash is pilot error. Contributing factors were the controller situation and taxiway construction. The media can make whatever to-do they like about controller rest or tower staffing but the cause of the accident was inattentiveness on the part of the pilots.
iamwiz82
Lifer
- Jan 10, 2001
- 30,772
- 13
- 81
:roll:
N431CA already had GPS, most of Comair's fleet did. They were retrofitting them. Either way, if the pilots ignored the compass heading(digital and perhaps analog, if CRJs have them), what makes you think that they would have taken the time to look at the GPS while on the ground?
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1110AP_Kentucky_Crash_Prevention.html
You're wrong. Commercial jets all have very sophisticated and expensive navigation systems, including GPS. What you suggest would require the pilot to enter the correct runway number in a system prior to taking off. When pilots crap out on their training, as they did in this tragic accident, no amount of automation is going to fix every situation. As easily as a runway number could be entered in a GPS, the pilots could have verified their heading indicators against the magnetic heading of the runway they thought they were on.
You know a little reading would go a long way:
8-31-2006 Plane crash puts focus on new technology
LEXINGTON, Ky. - A cockpit warning system used by only a few commercial airlines might have prevented the deadly Comair jet crash last weekend if the plane had been equipped with the $18,000 piece of technology, a former top federal safety official says.
"To have 49 people burned up in a crash that is totally preventable is one of the worst things I have ever seen, and I've seen almost everything in aviation," Jim Hall, former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from his home in Chattanooga, Tenn.
A Runway Awareness and Advisory System made by Phoenix-based Honeywell Aerospace uses a mechanical voice to identify the runway by number before takeoff and warns pilots if the runway is too short for their plane.
Only Alaska Airlines, Air France, FedEx, Lufthansa and Malaysia Airlines have ordered the system for their planes, Reavis said.
No commuter airlines have the warning device.
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