Only one person during the midnight to 5-6 AM shift, actually it was usually less due to shift overlap and only from about 1 AM to 5 AM.
*don’t know how I left that out of the first post. Human I guess… *
Latest news report from FAA…
Turns out the FAA had some while back determined that LEX should have TWO operator/controllers, one handling tower ops (directing traffic on the ground and in final landing/initial TO run) and another handling “radar” (= actual planes-in-the-air) during the night shift. From the article it seems this could have been handled by “outsourcing” the controlling of planes-in-the-air to some other full-staffed radar site (Indianapolis) so the tower guy at LEX could limit himself to the ground, but it was NOT done.
Still, IMO this may not have helped, if one guy had his head down looking at a local or regional screen of traffic overhead he would not notice the mistake, and the other guy would still have to be paying attention to other things going on on the ground besides 5191. And in earlier ocassions the lone controller had spotted mistakes, so this was one that got away.
Interesting about the one controller in the tower - a breach of the FAA’s own rules.
One wonders if the FAA will be as hard on itself as it is on pilots who commit violations.
Another interesting tidbit reported today - it seems the two pilots started their day by getting on and powering up the wrong airplane! An alert reamp worker informed them of their mistake, at which point they exited and went to the correct plane.
WTF? 
Gee, if I started my day like that I’d be compulsively double-checking everything from that point on, wouldn’t you?
Wonder what the tox report will say… I mean, that’s a little strange, don’t you think?
They can’t do much about it, not in the short term. The cohort of controllers hired to replace the strikers Reagan fired are about to reach their 25 years of civil service and retire en masse. There is going to have to be more relaxation of staffing rules for a period, not less, until/unless they’re replaced en masse.
Forget what I said about ground effect earlier, btw. The investigators found tire tracks off the end of 26, leading up to an earthen berm which deflected the plane into the air briefly. The crew might well not have realized there was a problem until that moment.
I’m amused thinking of the FAA telling this to the NTSB in the manner of a pilot who has a pretty good explanation for why an accident was beyond his/her control. The NTSB then typically says, “That’s very interesting - but it’s still your fault.”
Why?
Because the rules are written in such a way that it’s always the pilot’s fault, even when it’s not. Granted, that’s not often the case, but I do enjoy the thought of the FAA receiving some of its own treatment:
FAA version of accident cause: Reagan fired all the controllers in the 80’s, then we hired different ones and now they’re all retiring. Not our fault.
NTSB report: Failure of the command organization to maintain directional control of the agency. Variable winds of change were a secondary causative factor in the accident.
snerk
Good one, Mach Tuck.
Otherwise, continuing the disorientation theme, Lexington papers report that in yesterday’s press conference an FAA highmucketymuck kept referring to the airport as “Louisville”. You can’t make this up. (In the same press conference she tried to argue that the instruction to have two controllers was a “recommendation”, when the press has copies of a letter saying it’s a “requirement”.)
Damn.
Well, in part 91 it is arguably always the pilot’s fault. Mechanical probelm? Insufficiant pre-flight. Missle? failure to perform evasive action. etc.
(its a little different in the commercial arena)
Brian
Unless a controller said, “Use that runway you are on, it is fine, it is long enough, hurry there is traffic coming, Go, Go …”
It will all fall on the pilot as it should. Most of it would still be the pilots fault with some hard looks at the controler.
Accepting the resonsibility is one of the requirements of getting to play god and we do get to do that.
YMMV