Comair Flight 5191 crashed about half a mile past the end of the runway shortly after takeoff Sunday morning, killing 49 of the 50 people on board. The sole survivor, first officer James Polehinke, was in critical condition at a Lexington hospital.
The Delta commuter flight had been cleared to take off from the 7,000-foot Runway 22 at Lexington's Blue Grass Airport, sources told CNN earlier Sunday. Instead, evidence at the scene indicates the plane took off from Runway 26, which is about half as long, NTSB member Debbie Hersman told reporters Sunday evening.
This is really big news here in Lexington. The plane took off of the wrong runway for some reason. Really sad series of events.
Definitely looks like there will be some changes to the airport around here.
They had closed the airport last week to repave the runway but it looks like that had nothing to do with it and it was just an error of being on a runway that is too short for a commercial plane.
Do you know if that airport had a manned control tower?
The airport diagram shows one right by the end of the runways, but not sure if it's manned or not. If it was... it just makes things more confusing. Both runway ends are easily visible and weather was good.
From what I've heard there was one person manning the Control Tower which apparently was standard (at least for that time of day). The weather was fine and everything was up to code for this. Just confusing how the plane managed to take off on the wrong runway. Still no word yet on why that happened at least from what I've seen (and they've been talking about it all day on tv and the radio for the past couple days).
Commuter plane crashed (Kentucky) 1 survivor, 49 dead
