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Old 08-28-2006 | 05:31 AM
  #14  
IFlyFL410
Gets Weekends Off
 
Joined: Sep 2005
Posts: 242
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From: midsize
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To all of those on here who say: "How could they do this?"

First off, the ones of you that say this apparently have no 121 experience or ever flown into LEX, or both. A typical departure out of LEX goes like this: Pushabck, call for taxi, tower says taxi to RWY 22. From that point, it's only a 3-4 minute taxi to the runway. With checkilists etc involved, it can be a very busy few minutes. That time of morning, tower is usually clearing you for takeoff while you're still taxiing, so it all happens without stopping. This is pretty much common where ever we go. Anyone who has flown into LEX under these circumstances can back me up on this next point. Once out to the RWY(s), 26 is very tempting to make the turn onto. I would say that 90% of the times I've been up there, there's always some mention, jokingly alot of times, about making sure we taxi cross 26 instead of onto it, as we are actully taxiing across it going to 22. All this is assuming "10sm and clear" Wx. Throw in 6am, light rain, still dark for the most part, well now you have even more links in the "chain of events." As far as not verifying the heading on takeoff, it's easy not to double-check it or even if you do look down, you think you see what you should because in your mind, you "know" you're on the right RWY. Day in and day out, 5 times a day, we do takeoffs and probably less than 0.1% of the time is there never a question about being on the wrong RWY. As any investigator will tell you, complacency is a top killer in the aviation business. We're all guilty of it, every flight, every day in some form or another. Anyone who tells you otherwise, is a prime example of suffering from complacency. I'm not trying to solve the case already, just trying to shed some light on the subject for folks who haven't been in the scenerio that this Comair crew was probably in, just like many others of us have been.
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