"John Mazor" wrote in message
...

Irrelevant. Taking off and landing safely is the pilot's responsibility.
The presence or absence of a tower, a controller, or even a runway is
irrelevant.


Really? Then why bother having them?


Controllers? For separation.



Of course the crew had primary responsibility, although the anomalies in
airport markings and notices and layout will play a role, too.


Airport markings and notices and layout share responsibility with the crew?
What airport markings, notices, or layout indicated that runway 26 was
runway 22?



The point about the ATC role goes to redundancy, not the crew's actions.
If the controller had been able to stick to just one of his two jobs, he
might have noticed the errant takeoff and warned the crew. There was a
fairly recent posting in one of the aviation groups of exactly the same
incident - same airport, same runways confused by a regional airliner
crew - 13 years ago. The crew and the controller caught it at about the
same time. This time neither did, but the controller couldn't have caught
it because by then he was engaged in other duties - the job that should
have been performed by the second (required) controller.


The job that should have been performed by the second (required) controller
was radar. Had that requirement been adhered to it wouldn't have guaranteed
a second controller in the tower cab.



This is not to excuse the crew's oversight, but redundancy is an essential
pillar of our safety system. It's prevented far, far more accidents than
have occurred. Redundancy failures often are part of the chain of events
that has to occur before you actually get an accident. The secret to
airline safety's excellent record is identifying the links that can make
up such a chain, and fixing or preventing them.


Two pilots were on duty in the cockpit, that didn't provide sufficient
redundacy.