Chicago Tribune: Crew member voiced concern about lack of runway lights

By Jon Hilkevitch and Charles Sheehan

Chicago Tribune

August 29, 2006

LEXINGTON , Ky. - The co-pilot of a Comair commuter jet was at the controls accelerating the plane down a runway too short for a successful takeoff when he or the captain voiced concern there were no lights bordering the airstrip, according to a cockpit voice recording that accident investigators described Monday.

Seconds later, the plane carrying 50 people slammed into a berm at the end of the runway at Blue Grass Airport in Lexington and became slightly airborne. The plane then plowed through an airport perimeter fence and trees before crashing on a hilltop a half-mile away, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.

After analyzing 29 seconds of tape from the cockpit voice recorder during the takeoff, investigators said there is nothing suggesting the pilots had any idea that a catastrophe was imminent. There was no communication between the air-traffic control tower and the airliner during the almost half-minute period, officials said.

"The only indication we have from our group that listened to the cockpit voice recorder was that they noticed the runway did not have lights," said safety board member Debbie Hersman.

Forty-seven passengers, the captain and the flight attendant on the Atlanta-bound jet were killed when the 50-seat plane crashed.

The air-traffic controller assigned the plane to use the airport's other runway, which is twice as long, but the pilots made a wrong turn on a taxiway.

The co-pilot flying the plane, James Polehinke, 44, was rescued from the burning wreckage and he remained hospitalized in critical condition Monday night. Investigators have been unable to speak with him, Hersman said.

The layout at Lexington , which includes a single taxiway leading to the airport's two runways, has confused other pilots in the past. In Sunday's crash, the tracks of three tires were found at the end of the runway, and preliminary findings show that not even the plane's nose-gear was off the ground when the jet reached the end of the 3,500-foot Runway 26, investigators said.

Hersman said the radio communications between the controller and the pilots showed the crew planned to depart from Runway 22, the 7,003-foot runway that airliners need to use to get off the ground. Instead, the plane took off from the shorter Runway 26, built to handle only small general aviation planes.

The manufacturer of the CRJ100 calculated that the aircraft would have required at least 3,539 feet to gain enough speed during its takeoff roll to raise the nose wheel, Hersman said. But it was unclear whether that small extra margin would have been enough to help keep the plane aloft.

The accident, the deadliest U.S. airliner crash since 2001, created deep concerns over first, how such a fundamental mistake could have been made, and second, why both pilots failed to heed a series of clues that should have helped them catch their navigational error.

In addition to the runway being too short and aligned in a different direction than the plane's flight plan, the airstrip was dimly lit, pocked with cracks and only half as wide as the main runway.

"If I were a family member, I would be as angry as I could be over a loss of life that was so preventable," said James Hall, a former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board. "Every safety device on the airport surface was blown through."

A Chicago Tribune review of safety records found previous confusion among pilots taxiing to the runways in Lexington though none had resulted in accidents.

In November 1993, a pilot for an unidentified airline said he mistakenly lined up his plane to take off on Runway 26, the 3,500-foot runway that the Comair plane used on Sunday, instead of Runway 22, which is the 7,003-foot-long airstrip designed for commercial aircraft.

Fortunately, the pilot and an air-traffic controller caught the error in time.

"Aircraft was cleared for immediate takeoff ... on Runway 22," the pilot wrote in a report to the Aviation Safety Reporting System, which tracks incidents reported voluntarily to uncover trends that could jeopardize safety and lead to accidents. Under the program, operated by NASA, pilots are granted immunity from disciplinary or regulatory action in exchange for self-reporting operational errors.

"We taxied onto runway and told tower we needed a moment to check our departure routing with our weather radar (storms in the area, raining at the airport)," the pilot wrote. "We realized our heading was not correct for assigned runway and at that moment tower called us to cancel takeoff clearance because we were lined up on Runway 26."

The plane waited for another aircraft to land, then taxied to Runway 22 and took off.

In his report, the pilot recommended that warnings be issued to notify pilots about the single taxiway leading to multiple runway ends.

In a July 1991 report, another airline pilot noted how close the thresholds of Runways 22 and 26 are to each other in connection with an incident in which confusion arose between the flight crew and controllers over whether the plane was cleared to taxi onto Runway 22.

"To prevent occurrence from happening again, I would recommend taxiing slower and better runway markings," the pilot wrote.

Several other incidents were reported in which airline pilots were instructed to taxi across Runway 26, even though the runway was not built to handle the weight of the heavier aircraft, and no signage advised the pilots of big transport planes to stay off the runway.

In the aftermath of Sunday's crash, a second air-traffic controller has been assigned to the midnight-to-8 a.m. shift on weekends at the airport, the Federal Aviation Administration said Monday. Two controllers are routinely assigned to the tower on weekdays, when activity is heavier, the FAA said.

The sole controller on duty at the time of the crash handled all planes taxiing on the airfield, including giving clearance routings to planes requesting departures; and he or she was also responsible for monitoring the radar scope for aircraft approaching the airport and planes that had already departed.

Officials declined to say what the controller on duty was doing from the time the Comair plane pushed back from the gate until it took off. They also wouldn't say whether having a second controller in the tower might have caught the pilots' mistake of lining up for takeoff on the shorter runway intended only for smaller aircraft.

Aviation experts offered differing viewpoints on the responsibility of the air-traffic controller to monitor the Comair plane.

"It's the responsibility of the tower to watch that airplane while it is on the ground and to alert the pilot to any dangers," said Jerry Skinner, an aviation attorney with the Chicago-based Nolan Law Group. "I don't understand how the controller allowed the pilot to get as far as he did without noticing the mistake."

But other experts said the pilot in command of the flight bears full responsibility.

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

Sheehan reported from Lexington, Hilkevitch from Chicago .