Comair Crash today (fatal)

[derg]

the CRJ 200 needs approx 5000ft of runway. they had 3500 which tells me they were not in a high speed abort, right?

With all due respect, you're not a crash investigator and have zero information for the causal aspects of the accident beyond runway length and hugely approximate performance data.

Otherwise, all plane crashes would be "Well, the airplane hit the ground too hard".

Sure, but why?

Did he choose the wrong runway?

Did his performance data mistakenly indicate that he had appropriate performance for that runway?

Did he execute a high speed abort, figure that he didn't have the performance to stop in time and firewalled the engine?

Was the signage proper or confusing?

Did the pilot *think* he was on the proper runway?

Without answers for the above questions, you really can't assume anything whatsoever. I don't want to pull rank, but I studied aircraft crash investigation for a few semesters in college and Bill Waldock and Craig Funk always insisted that the 'most obvious' isn't always the whole story at all.

 

[Timbuff10]

Seems like the tower would have seen them take the wrong runway or something...

I bet when this is all said and done, you will find that many links in the chain of safety were broken today.

 

[Maximilian_Jenius]

I saw a pretty fair (surprisingly) report on the crash today on CBS evening news.

They had a whole seperate artical peice on regional pilots and how they are hired with lower hours/mins then their major counterparts. So maybe what DE727 & B767Driver have asked for in the past, that being more public awareness of low time pilots on regionals may result from this crash and horrible tragedy!

 

[kellwolf]

I'm betting ATC staffing will be a contributing factor. If they had a dedicated tower controller, I'm sure he would have seen this and said something. As it is, my money is on one guy running clearance/ground/tower. Totally possible he could have cleared them for takeoff and had to give progressive taxi to a 172 immediately afterwards. Or he could have been reading a clearance to another regional jet. Once again, without transcripts, who knows?

 

[kellwolf]

I saw a pretty fair (surprisingly) report on the crash today on CBS evening news.

They had a whole seperate artical peice on regional pilots and how they are hired with lower hours/mins then their major counterparts. So maybe what DE727 & B767Driver have asked for in the past, that being more public awareness of low time pilots on regionals may result from this crash and horrible tragedy!

Except this crew wasn't low time. CA had been there since 99 and the FO had been there since March of 02. Proof that things like this can happen to ANY of us.

I didn't see the report, but it smacks of a "terror in the skies!!!" style reporting. Might as well say something like "Hospitals are hiring doctors that graduated in the bottom 10% of their class!"

 

[desertdog71]

I saw a pretty fair (surprisingly) report on the crash today on CBS evening news.

They had a whole seperate artical peice on regional pilots and how they are hired with lower hours/mins then their major counterparts. So maybe what DE727 & B767Driver have asked for in the past, that being more public awareness of low time pilots on regionals may result from this crash and horrible tragedy!

Here we go!!!

 

[MikeD]

With all due respect, you're not a crash investigator and have zero information for the causal aspects of the accident beyond runway length and hugely approximate performance data.

Otherwise, all plane crashes would be "Well, the airplane hit the ground too hard".

Sure, but why?

Did he choose the wrong runway?

Did his performance data mistakenly indicate that he had appropriate performance for that runway?

Did he execute a high speed abort, figure that he didn't have the performance to stop in time and firewalled the engine?

Was the signage proper or confusing?

Did the pilot *think* he was on the proper runway?

Without answers for the above questions, you really can't assume anything whatsoever. I don't want to pull rank, but I studied aircraft crash investigation for a few semesters in college and Bill Waldock and Craig Funk always insisted that the 'most obvious' isn't always the whole story at all.

Yup. Hell, as an accident investigator myself, I'm taking what the news has to say with a good grain of salt; and try not to pay attention to their stupidity. There is no easy answer to this one....the "what" may eventualy turn out to be so, but we're not even at the tip of the iceberg as to the "why". And likely won't be for a good while. Even my last investigation, the "what" was about as straightforward as can be, but the "why" was a road with so many forks, interchanges, u-turns, parallel lanes, dead ends, false road signs, misleading road signs, no road signs, deliberate wrong directions, etc, etc, etc, etc; it was tough enough more me just to separate the wheat from the chaff, much less the quality wheat from the average wheat.

Point is, anyone who thinks they have the "ah-ha!" here, has another thing coming.

PS- Craig Funk IS the man...........THE example of the word professionalism. Doug knows exactly what I mean.

 

[JaceTheAce]

No idea.

I've been putting food on my table by flying airplanes since 1993 but I still don't consider myself an "expert". But the newchannels have all of their "airline experts" but never really say what truly qualifies them.

But the news isn't about conveying factual information, they're there to entertain and to capture you long enough to interface with their advertisers. I haven't even watched the news today because I can guarantee I'll hear something that'll raise my blood pressure 30 points.

:yeahthat: I refuse to watch the news anymore on the crash. I will wait until the NTSB comes out with their Prelim report and leave it at that. I was so tired of the media having "aviation experts" ...yeah whatever... explain what "could have" happened. It is so true that in the end, all they are concerned about is keeping you intrigued with a need for more information on the crash so that you can watch every second of their advertisers' commercials.

Please people, don't speculate and become another member of the notoriously uncredible media.

 

[kellwolf]

I wonder how much extra $$$ I could get on the side pimping myself out as an aviation "expert." Hell, I even fly the same type of plane Comair uses. One guy CNN had on couldn't even think of the right ATC phraseology to clear someone for takeoff! "You're cleared to the holding position."

 

[MikeD]

:yeahthat: I refuse to watch the news anymore on the crash. I will wait until the NTSB comes out with their Prelim report and leave it at that. I was so tired of the media having "aviation experts" ...yeah whatever... explain what "could have" happened. It is so true that in the end, all they are concerned about is keeping you intrigued with a need for more information on the crash so that you can watch every second of their advertisers' commercials.

Please people, don't speculate and become another member of the notoriously uncredible media.

I hear what you're saying. But informed speculation and question, in terms of generating discussion, is cool. Speculation that's being written to pass as some sort of fact, is where we get into wasting time.

IMHO

 

[gredenko]

Two more things to think about:

1) Shouldn't we be looking at the compass before departure to confirm runway heading in multiple runway environments? I'm not a 121-35 guy; for those who are - is this a part of any checklist or personal habit? I teach it to my students as a CFI.

2) 8/26, the mistaken runway, is listed as:

Surface: asphalt/concrete, in poor condition
CONC IS SEVERELY CRACKED
(http://www.airnav.com/airport/KLEX)

Do you think they would have felt the extra bumps on roll out and wondered?

RIP all souls. I don't think the FO will remember a thing about the whole deal.

 

[zmiller4]

...zero information for the causal aspects of the accident beyond runway length and hugely approximate performance data.

And not to keep bagging on buffalopilot, but just like all the news outlets, he's basing his assumptions of what happened on a total lack of understanding of how FAR 121 performance data is calculated.

 

[B767Driver]

I don't really care to get into much of a discussion on this...I'd have too much to comment on that would be inappropriate and possibly irrelevant to this situation, especially at this stage. I will say that in the end this will be a human factors nightmare that will be discussed with all the classics.

In the meantime, fly professionally...by the book, with a minimum of a modicum of discipline and decorum. Routines make airline flying the safest type of flying in the world...they also provide huge traps for the complacent to land. Attack complacency ferociously...like your life depends on it. It does. To the FO's: Do not let a subpar flying partner drag you into his MO...if you find this to be the case...mentally lift your awareness and test your theory of the situation at hand. It'll save the day.

 

[MikeD]

Two more things to think about:

1) Shouldn't we be looking at the compass before departure to confirm runway heading in multiple runway environments? I'm not a 121-35 guy; for those who are - is this a part of any checklist or personal habit? I teach it to my students as a CFI.

2) 8/26, the mistaken runway, is listed as:

Surface: asphalt/concrete, in poor condition
CONC IS SEVERELY CRACKED
(http://www.airnav.com/airport/KLEX)

Do you think they would have felt the extra bumps on roll out and wondered?

RIP all souls. I don't think the FO will remember a thing about the whole deal.

1) Seems to me to be a generally accepted practice. Whether or not it was accomplished here, the CVR should tell.

2) Hard to say. It depends, I suppose.

 

[kellwolf]

1) Shouldn't we be looking at the compass before departure to confirm runway heading in multiple runway environments? I'm not a 121-35 guy; for those who are - is this a part of any checklist or personal habit? I teach it to my students as a CFI.

Not part of the checklist at my airline, but it's something I do automatically. We had a crew takeoff on the wrong runway a year or so ago, so it gets beat into our heads during training now.

2) 8/26, the mistaken runway, is listed as:

Surface: asphalt/concrete, in poor condition
CONC IS SEVERELY CRACKED
(http://www.airnav.com/airport/KLEX)

Do you think they would have felt the extra bumps on roll out and wondered?

I think it was recently re-surfaced and re-painted, which could have been another contributing factor.

 

[B767Driver]

Except this crew wasn't low time. CA had been there since 99 and the FO had been there since March of 02. Proof that things like this can happen to ANY of us.

I didn't see the report, but it smacks of a "terror in the skies!!!" style reporting. Might as well say something like "Hospitals are hiring doctors that graduated in the bottom 10% of their class!"

That's pretty low time. Before the RJs and commuters it was 10 to 15 years to upgrade in an airline jet.

 

[kellwolf]

We can also go back further to United putting PPL in their planes. It's a different world now than it was when United did that, it's a different world than when Pan Am ruled, and it's different than when regionals only flew turboprops.

 

[MikeD]

. I will say that in the end this will be a human factors nightmare that will be discussed with all the classics.

Was thinking the same thing.

In the meantime, fly professionally...by the book, with a minimum of a modicum of discipline and decorum. Routines make airline flying the safest type of flying in the world...they also provide huge traps for the complacent to land. Attack complacency ferociously...like your life depends on it. It does. To the FO's: Do not let a subpar flying partner drag you into his MO...if you find this to be the case...mentally lift your awareness and test your theory of the situation at hand. It'll save the day.

Like my quote in one of my accident discusions in the "Aviation Safety" forum on the board here:

The novice pilot's enemy is experience, while the experienced pilot's enemy is complacency

 

[Theotokos]

This is not confirmed and I do not want this to be taken as fact but I heard that the control tower was unmanned at the time and they were cleared by Indianoplolis. I was wondering why tower did not say somthing if they saw a plane taxing on to the wrong runway and that may well be it. Not sure though. It is a small Class C so an unmanned tower could well be the case.

It is a great tragedy and it reall has effect on me because it hit so close to home. This airport is about 45 miles to the east of here. It just reminds me of how these accidents can happen anywhere. So often they happen "in other places" that we sometimes feel immune to them. It reminds me that I could have been on that flight had I been going somewhere since Atlanta is a pretty pick connection point. While I am not means scared to fly, this has really hit home for me.

RIP fellow aviators and fallen passengers. God's speed and may everyone on this forum stay safe. I hope none of the crew were members. A very unlikely situation given the odds, but it would be sad all the same.

 

[Maximilian_Jenius]

Except this crew wasn't low time. CA had been there since 99 and the FO had been there since March of 02. Proof that things like this can happen to ANY of us.

I didn't see the report, but it smacks of a "terror in the skies!!!" style reporting. Might as well say something like "Hospitals are hiring doctors that graduated in the bottom 10% of their class!"

Yea I know but does Joe Q. Public? Perception is reality sadly often in most cases.