FYI, the stories are now that it used the wrong runway, too short to reach takeoff speed – that it basically clipped the fence and trees at the end of the runway and staggered along for a bit until either stalling out or hitting something more substantial.
Bad visibility and/or confusing taxi instructions and/or sheer stupidity. Probably.
Poor bastards.
Aero-news coverage:
Not sure there is anything new in there.
Brian
Lex resident here. Neither I nor anyone I know was on the plane (so far; the entire list hasn’t been released). The stories of the people whose names have been released are heartbreaking. A newlywed couple, married Saturday, were on their way to their honeymoon. A longtime head of Habitat for Humanity, a member of the parish where we went to Mass yesterday. He was on his way to the Gulf Coast to work on houses for Katrina victims. He was Habitat’s national Volunteer of the Year in 2004. Several horse people, as someone else mentioned, and the head of the University of Kentucky extension service.
Lots of national media here, which isn’t unprecedented. It was amusing, though on the NBC Nightly News, when they talked about Keeneland Race Course, they showed video of Churchill Downs (located in Louisville, not Lexington). Hey, it’s Kentucky, right? :rolleyes:
Somehow or another no one involved noticed that this plane attempted to take off from the wrong runway, essentially guaranteeing a crash.
But I assume there were sufficient personnel and resources to ensure that none of the passengers had toothpaste or bottled water with them.
Further proof of the inability to make air travel risk-free.
I would feel safer with fewer TSP folk searching carryons, and more air traffic controllers working more reasonable hours under less stressful conditions.
An interesting new twist: Our main runway here has been 7000’ for some time. But the airport just finished adding 600’ “safety zones” to both ends of the main runway. Part of the repaving project 8-9 days ago was to “shift” the main runway a few hundred feet to the south, so that both safety zones could be put into use.
One effect of this change is that airplanes now turn left at the same place regardless of which runway they are using. They either take a soft left turn to continue taxiing to the main runway, or a hard left to use the general aviation runway. Prior to the change, planes using the main runway would have continued taxiing in much more of a straight line to the end of the “pre-shift” main runway. diagram
My point is that a commercial plane turning left at the beginning of the general aviation runway would have stuck out like a sore thumb prior to the southward shift of the main runway. Now, every plane turns left there.
This is still no excuse for a truly unacceptable mistake. The general aviation runway wasn’t even lit, for Christ’s sakes. :mad:
I was chatting with the Aviation people here at the Royal Saudi Air Force. They reported that this was the first fatal crash of a commercial aircraft in the US in five years. That is pretty impressive and some good news.
Shame we could not have made it six though.
Question for pilots:
Let’s say it’s a clear day and you’re sitting in your plane at the end of a runway. Can you look out from the cockpit and have a pretty good idea about it’s length? At least a good enough idea to distinguish 3500’ from 7000’?
For what it’s worth: I’m not a pilot, but I’d like to weigh in here: the flight in question left at 6AM, which is still pitch dark in Lexington this time of year. It was also wet and overcast. There is a chance that the pilots were expecting the good runway to also be unlit, due to the recent paving activities. The “good” runway had been unlit for most of the prior week.
That doesn’t change you’re question and I’m not trying to pre-empt it.
At this point it looks like something of a stretch to attribute this crash to overworked/overstressed controllers.
Unfortunately, a lot of aviation rulemaking happens in reaction to a problem, rather than as the result of careful consideration of cause and effect. IOW, there’s a tendency to do what feels safer instead of what is safer.
Not quite – it’s the worst commercial crash in almost 5 years, though, and some experts are defining it as the first “major” fatal crash since (due to numbers, type of aircraft, major-airline affiliation).
Plus last winter’s Southwest runway-overrun at Chicago-Midway that killed one person on the ground.
Oh, sure. On a CLEAR DAY.
Here’s the thing - from what I’ve seen from pictures and from my airport directory info, there was considerable difference between the two runways. For example, one was twice as wide as the other, in addition to being twice as long. The short runway has “shoulders” of pavement. The long runway does not, and has a taxiway off to one side. The long runway is asphalt. The short runway is concrete. The runways have different markings. You would think this would all be sufficient to make mistaking one for the other impossible.
Except it was dark. And apparently raining.
Well, in the dark one wet pavement more resembles another than when dry. Rain/fog/mist can obscure the ends of long runways or make it difficult to judge distance. If the lights are out on top of all that… well, airplanes do have “headlights” (they’re called “landing lights” and “taxi lights” but that’s nitpicky). But just as the headlights on your car don’t replace what streetlights can do, neither can the airplane’s lights replace properly functioning runway/taxiway lights.
Now, there IS another double check, and it’s quite simple. Runway numbers are assigned by magnetic heading, rounded off. So if you’re on runway 18 (for example) your compass/directional gyro/GPS should indicate you are pointing at 180 degrees on the compass rose (magnetic south, in this case). If you’re on runway 32, you’re pointing at 320. And for runway 22, your compass should read 220, not 260.
There are other possible factors like missing directional signs, and confusing/new intersections and turns.
Could the air traffic controller be a factor? Well, it’s possible that a fatigued controller might have missed a mis-alignment of the airplane, or an airplane turning onto the wrong runway - especially if some of the normal airport lighting was not functional. However, the pilots have the responsibility to double-check controller’s instructions. Also, it is the pilots who have final say in whether or not a takeoff will actually occur. That is why ATC says “you are cleared for takeoff”, not “you are ordered to take off”. ATC just says it’s your turn - the pilot decides whether or not to proceed from there.
I’m guessing human error is a big factor here, but it’s probably greatly affected by lighting - or lack of it - and possible weather conditions at the time which would make such an error more likely and harder to detect.
In any case, a tragedy all around.
According to today’s statement by the investigators, the tower clearly instructed the plane to take off on the correct runway, and the pilots clearly repeated the instructions accurately.
But, as noted above, the plane would have turned at the same point for either runway.
A pilot who flies out of here regularly states in this morning’s paper that the long runway has a “crown” part way down, so you cannot see the other 2/3 of the “good” runway when getting ready for take-off.
Although apparently the controller on duty apparently never contacted the plane at any time to tell them they were on the wrong runway. Granted there was only one person on duty, but this is not a busy airport.
How would the controller have known?
But, until yesterday at least, it was not the tower operator’s duty or SOP to visually verify the actual position of the departing plane, specially when there was no other traffic to get in the way. all that was required was that the PIC acknowledge “Roger, Runway 22” and it would be his responsibility to be in the right place.
Fair enough. You folks know more about SOP here than do I. We casual fliers have a false sense of security that the ATC people are watching out the window. I don’t know anything about their jobs, and certainly wouldn’t want their jobs.
Well, and in fairness, if it were a couple hours’ drive to the North at Cincinatti-Covington, there would be more likely to be someone specifically tasked to control taxiing and to look out on ground-radar and/or visually where are the airplanes lining up for take-off. At a place like LEX at 6 am on a Sunday, OTOH, it’s a one-person band and his/her main task is to make sure what few airplanes are in his pattern do not use runway or airspace that is currently occupied by someone else or in their path.
I was in Lexington from Sunday around 4:00pm to Monday 11:30pm setting up the disaster operations center at the Red Cross Chapter House. MY assigned vehicle, the ECRV, is still there. It has been a sobering time, and especially hard when WLEX started showing the faces, names and the lives the passengers were leading. I think there will be few in the city who didn’t lose a family member, friend or coworker. I was very impressed with the arrangements made between Delta and the Campbell house.
From what I could see, it sounds like there were at least three errors made that compounded the following errors. The NTSB briefing on Monday (and kudos to the spokeswoman for refusing to discuss anything other than the facts they had) indicated that the pilots didn’t know they were on the wrong runway until after they started their takeoff roll, meaning that it would have been nearly impossible to stop when they realized where they were. The ASOS data indicated only a modest 12-13 knot wind from the collapsing storm dead ahead of the jet, so I don’t think that would have been a factor in the crash.
Vlad/Igor
Even in a place as big as Tulsa, OK., 15 years ago, it was SOP for the duties of approach control, departure control, tower and ground control to just be one person in the tower cab. Talking to center, talking to all traffic under their particular control at the time, etc.
Usually one or two planes per hour, no big deal but if there were 2-3 plans at once, it would be very common for them not to watch the actual takeoff as they might be looking at the radar and communicating the next traffic showing up. TUL does not have a runway layout that is so easy for the planes to make a mistake on. It is quite possible the controller was doing some other function at the instant the plane actually lined up and started it’s roll.
But no matter the confusing layout, the lack of lighting, the crown in the long runway, the tiredness of themselves or the controller, the rain or the printed procedures, it was the two guys ion front who had the responsibility to do this correctly.
They were human and as humans some times do, they screwed the pooch.
There will be procedural changes come from this at the minimum in that airlines SOP for that airport. Most importantly, all pilots who operate from confusing airports will be even more careful because learning from others mistakes is one thing that pilots are pretty good at. They are always the first ones to the accident site.
It is a shame that this lesson cost so much but hopefully we will all be safer for it.