Comair Pilot Error

On 2006-08-29, Peter Duniho wrote:
"Andrew Sarangan" wrote in message
oups.com...
[...] I sincerely feel for those who lost loved ones. They have the
right be very angry. I am angry, and I did not lose anything.

You have never made a single mistake, ever, while flying an airplane?

IMHO, your anger is misplaced. It's not like the pilots made the mistake on
purpose.

And the pilots weren't out looking to get killed or kill anyone else.
Hopefully the surviving FO can shed light on what went wrong.

Although I've never come close to crashing in more than 1000 hours of GA
flying, I realise I'm not immune to stupid pilot tricks. Whenever I read
of an incident like this (done, by the way, by a two man crew, trained
in CRM and highly trained on the aircraft) I wonder how *I* could make
the same mistake. I want to know:

how they didn't notice that the runway *looked* damned short.
how they didn't notice the numbers painted on the end
how they didn't notice that their glass cockpit was showing they were on
a heading that they didn't expect to be on when lined up.

It has already taught me NOT to even think of relying on a controller to
catch an error I have made.

Every time I read these sorts of incidents, I feel a "dark cloud" of if
they can make that mistake - then so can I. Especially since there are
two people here trained to work as a crew of two - not just one with
much less equipment.
--
Yes, the Reply-To email address is valid.
Oolite-Linux: an Elite tribute: http://oolite-linux.berlios.de

It has become standard practice for most airlines when lined up for takeoff
to call out and confirm the runway heading and any pertinent immediate
profile data. If that aircraft has a setable heading bug on the HSI most
operators set the runway heading during preflight. If so, it wouldn't have
been lined up correctly when they began their takeoff.

--
Darrell R. Schmidt
B-58 Hustler History: (see below)
http://members.cox.net/dschmidt1/

"Andrew Sarangan" wrote in message
oups.com...
I am getting tired of comments like "controller should have warned the
pilots", or "taxiway was confusing", or "runway lights were off" etc..
One could not find a better example of a pure and simple pilot error.
The runway was clear, the weather was VFR, and the airplane was working
fine. It is highly likely that this was the only airplane maneuvering
at the airport. Even if the controller had cleared him to takeoff on
runway 26, the responsibility would have been on the pilot to decline
that clearance. Yet, a perfectly good airplane was run off the runway
and ploughed into the woods.

NTSB is investigating whether the pilots had coffee that morning, and
how much sleep they got. This is a futile exercise. Taxiing and
departing from a relatively quiet airport under VFR conditions is an
extremely low workload situation. We are not talking about shooting a
non-precision approach to minimums in a thunderstorm after a full day
of flying. A pilot should be able to do this even if he had partied all
night at the bar. What happened was gross negligence.

I shudder to think that my wife and baby flew the Comair CRJ only a few
days prior to this accident. Fortunately they are flying back with me
in our trusty GA airplane. I feel a lot better about it than trusting
my family to stupid mistakes that even my students pilots know how to
avoid. I sincerely feel for those who lost loved ones. They have the
right be very angry. I am angry, and I did not lose anything.

On 2006-08-29, wrote:
Makes me want to ask how effective landing lights are, normally? Are

They are VERY bright on transport aircraft. As a kid, I lived almost
right underneath the approach to Manchester airport. Airliners lit up
my bedroom wall from well over a mile out.

--
Yes, the Reply-To email address is valid.
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On 2006-08-29, Dave Doe wrote:
No - you've provided a different question - thereby completely changing
the original point - that taking off on the wrong runway is not a simple
mistake, it's a very very serious one. It's on par with without the
gear down.

The PIC was certainly to blame here, being the final authority and
responsible person.

However, it's still necessary instead of being rashly angry to analyse
WHY an experienced crew made this mistake and how the rest of us can
avoid it. Highly experienced pilots have also forgotten the gear, landed
at the wrong airport, switched to the wrong fuel tank, feathered the
wrong engine etc. I'd rather be analytical rather than angry at finding
what made the accident chain.

Throwing a divider while 15 or driving while drunk is a deliberate
decision to do those things. I strongly suspect the pilots didn't
deliberately choose to take off on the wrong runway - instead it was an
error and I'm interested to find the root causes of the error regardless
of who's responsible for what.

--
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If further information shows that
something happened that would have made
almost all other pilots do the same thing...

....then there would be lots of these kinds of accidents, and rules or
procedures to prevent them. But there aren't. Therefore, it's a
relatively rare error manifestation. Nonetheless, as one is too many,
it is worth tracking down the cause so we don't get a second one.

Jose
--
The monkey turns the crank and thinks he's making the music.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

Every time I read these sorts of incidents, I feel a "dark cloud" of if
they can make that mistake - then so can I.

Bingo.

Jose
--
The monkey turns the crank and thinks he's making the music.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

Look closely at a picture of Rwy 26 and you will see solid (white?)
lines either side of the centerline that are probably 75 feet apart.

That's a good observation by C Massey though. Some of the news reports
mentioned that runway 26 was only half as wide as 22, so they
questioned how could the pilots not have noticed something that
obvious? Well, being that the pavement is actually 150 ft wide, runway
26 was unlit, they probably didn't notice the lines that marked it was
only 75 ft usable width.

C. Massey wrote:
OK... But what I don't understand is why would they have two runways that
are the same surface width, but it is listed as a 75 ft runway they way it
is marked? It seems to me that if they are the same surface width, they
would mark both of them the same usable width.



They've stopped maintaining the surface along the perimeters as a cost saving
measure, so they then demark the interior 75 feet as useable. They are
obligated to maintain the useable portion but not the unusable portion. I would
imagine at some point in the future Lexington will end up closing the shorter
runway entirely just to be free of the expense.


--
Mortimer Schnerd, RN
mschnerdatcarolina.rr.com

Dylan Smith wrote:
how they didn't notice that the runway *looked* damned short.


Many runways have a hump somewhere along its length that precludes seeing the
entire thing until you're airborne. For example, 23L at RDU... you can only see
half of it from the end.... the rest disappears out of sight until you cross the
high spot.

This is hardly unique.



--
Mortimer Schnerd, RN
mschnerdatcarolina.rr.com

"Ron Lee" wrote in message .

John, I agree with Andrew based upon the facts already known. If
further information shows that something happened that would have made

Ron, that is *precisely* why the NTSB does not get into the business of even
discussing probable cause before the investigation is complete and all the
facts are in. In recent years they have started releasing certain
individual facts fairly early on, but not even a hint of a conclusion.

The NTSB is all too aware that the great bulk of the public audience
understands nothing about aviation, so whatever they say is subject to rash
misinterpretation. If they were to publicise preliminary conclusions
quickly, the news cycles and public awareness would cry Hallelujah!!! and
move on the the next titillating story, and the accident and its
investigation would sink into archival memory. If, then, 9 months from now
some research concluded that a bizarre string of coincidences led to this
accident through no fault of the crew, it wouldn't matter. The crew has
already been convicted in public.

This sort of thing has happened several times in the past. (Ask Bob Moore
about the PanAm 707 at Pago Pago.) There is no upside to rapid conclusions,
and an almost infinite downside.