LEX Crash
Received from an unamed source. For what it's worth.
Aviation disaster --a pilot's view A pilot/writer posted this at another writing site. He gave permission to repost this here because it is both relevant & important.
I live in Lexington and have thirty years of airline experience flying in and out of LEX. I was also the station liaison for Lexington for ten years . Here is what I think happened:
The two runways in question share the same common run-up area. The extended taxiway to the correct runway, runway 22 was closed due To construction. It has always been difficult to tell between the two runways when you are taxiing out. The natural thing to do is to take the wrong one. It is just there and you are always tempted to take it. When I flew out of LEX we always checked each other at least three times to make sure we were taking the correct runway. We checked the chart, we checked to make sure the correct runway number was at the end and we always double checked the FMS generated moving map. Most FMS systems will have a warning called "runway dissimilarity" pop up in magenta when your position at takeoff doesn't match the runway you programmed into the computer. This would not happen at LEX since you are virtually in the same spot when you take either runway. It was also raining at the time of takeoff and dark. The control tower opens at 6am (because we are, after all, all about saving money) and only has one controller on duty at that time. He or she has to: run ground control, clearance delivery, approach control and departure control. The one controller also has to program the ATIS and make the coffee. He or she probably cleared comair to take off and then put their head back down to do a chore or work another airplane. Taking the runway, the comair guy would put the power up and wouldn't realize they were on the wrong runway until they were about 70% down the pike. Too late to safely abort so he probably decided to try and continue the takeoff.
This is when the eye witnesses heard a series of explosions and thought the plane blew up in the air. Didn't happen -- what they heard and saw were compressor stalls of probably both engines. The pilot no doubt pushed the throttles all the way up and that demand to the engines combined with the steep pitch attitude cut off enough air to the intakes to cause the compressor stalls -- which, by the way, made them even more doomed. Less power. They stalled or simply hit one of the large hills to the west of the airport and came to a stop. Everybody on board was probably injured but alive. Then, a second or two later the post-crash fire began. With the darkness and the fact that most of them had broken legs, pelvises and backs they literally burned alive. Not smoke inhalation. They really actually burned to death. In my role as station liaison I wrote most of the post crash safety procedure for Delta at that field. Too bad there weren't enough survivors to use them.
BTW, comair and the press will tell you what a great plane the RJ is. This is a total lie. The Canadair RJ was designed to be an executive barge, not an airliner. They were designed to fly about ten times a month, not ten times a day. They have a long history of mechanical design shortfalls. I've flown on it and have piloted it. It is a steaming, underpowered piece of ****. It never had enough power to get out of its own way and this situation is exactly what everybody who flies it was afraid of. The senior member of the crew had about five and a half years of total jet experience. The copilot less. They had minimum training (to save money --enjoy that discount ticket!) and were flying a minimally equipped p.o.s. on very short rest. The layover gets in about 10pm the night before. They report for pick-up at 4:30am.
I'm sorry if I sound bitter but this is exactly the direction the entire airline industry is going. Expect to see bigger more colorful crashes in the future. email me if you need an off the record so-called expert. I have 20,000 hours of heavy jet flying time and am type rated in the 727, 757, 767, 777, DC-8, DC-9 and L-1011. <his email address was not included>