I thought i would post this for those in the comair crash thread. People can talk all day about what went wrong, how they may not have followed procedure, that they needed better training. Well guess what!! MISTAKES HAPPEN! The thing is that not all mistakes are fatal! How many times have you misheard a frequency from center? Accidentally read back a crossing and speed restriction wrong? Just remember, mistakes happen all the time to a varying degree. This one was just a really bad one. Had the runway been just a thousand feet longer they would have been fine and NO ONE would have been the wiser. Tower wasn't paying attention and they didn't know they were on the wrong runway. Just remember. Mistakes happen. From a TWA Guy i knew that had 14000 hours in a 747 that did a gear up landing in a mooney, to this military guys who have checklist, for checklist, to make sure they did the checklist. THEY EVEN HAVE TO CALL TOWER TO VERIFY GEAR DOWN!!!!!

http://www.zianet.com/tedmorris/dg/bombers4.html

dont be so quick to judge. just follow the rules, pay attention. and be careful!

by they way that cost us almost 300,000,000 DOLLARS

 

Thank you.
Rjcaptwife (Comair)

 

I hear that all the time from the Whidbey Naval Station pilots and controllers.

"Navy 1234 cleared to land, perform landing check."
"gear down and locked, cleared to land Navy 1234."

Personally i think its kinda cool.

 

Thats all I was trying to say. We need to learn from these mistakes and try to not let them happen again. As a military guy that trained on the civilian before coming to the ANG. Neither one of em do it better. In fact I found that other than the formation stuff much of it was very similar. We can all stand to learn from each other.

 

The night before the crash, a young couple was married. They were killed the next day when the plane crashed after the crew took off from the wrong runway. Would anyone here care to tell the families of that young, deceased couple that "mistakes happen"??

 

I would tell them that in a heartbeat, and I wouldn't think twice. I would tell them that it was a tragic tragic mistake that cost the capt his life, and will cause the F/O the kind of trauma the rest of his life that I can't even imagine. It also has caused heartbreak to hundreds perhaps thousands of relatives of everyone on that plane that day. But yes, I would have no problem explaining to them that mistakes do happen.

 

Gee Lab Rat - I'm glad you're perfect. Most of us have been lucky enough that our mistakes haven't cost anybody their life personally or the lives of those they worked. I guarantee none of the people in my flying career that died because they made a mistake did it on purpose and that's one of the things we all have to live with. I'm sure the crew of the Comair flight didn't step into the airplane saying we're going to see if we can take off on the wrong runway that's too short so we can kill ourselves and everyone on the plane.

NOW, if they had been doing something stupid (like all the drunk driving deaths that occur on our highways) where someone has a choice and knows they shouldn't be driving - that's different.

Climb off your cloud, take off your halo and join the rest of the imperfect human race.

 

Ex DP, i agree with you whole-heartedly...

However, there are mistakes and there are HOWLING BLOODY ******UPS!
Whatever anyone wants to say about mistakes happen and the like, that's true but you need to do simple things right like CHECKING YOUR DG/COMPASS BEFORE YOU ROLL. They knew that the runway wasn't lit. They said so themselves. There's no doubt that at 0600 the main runway would have been lit.

Their blunder was like someone turning the wrong way out of a gas station into oncoming traffic and causing a ten car pile-up.

Geez i'm the first to admit that i've made a few mistakes in my time, and i've been lucky enough to have got away with all of them so far - 'knock on wood' but cmon guys, people need to be accountable.

People say the responsibility should be shared with the controllers, but that's bull******, because what if they'd been using an uncontrolled field?? Pilots are responsible for the safe operation of the airplane, and the lives of everyone on board. They were GROSSLY NEGLIGENT in their mistakes which caused the crash and there's no getting around that fact.

 

Quote: The night before the crash, a young couple was married. They were killed the next day when the plane crashed after the crew took off from the wrong runway. Would anyone here care to tell the families of that young, deceased couple that "mistakes happen"??

Welcome to the job where we take responsibility for other peoples lives. every time we step into the cockpit of our craft we hold peoples lives in our hands. People in the back, people in the front, people on the ground. We have RESPONSIBILITY. And yes mistakes do happen. that's why we train. to minimize those mistakes to a bare minimum.

What were you suggesting we tell the family?

 

You don't really sound like you agree wholeheartedly. You sound like you completely disagree actually. Taking off on runway 26 instead of 22 is not GROSSLY negligent. It was a bad mistake, but I'm not sure that it finds it's way into the grossly negligent category. If they had skipped checklists, shown up drunk, and then taken off on 26, then I'll buy into the grossly negligent, but not yet. Also they mentioned the runway lights being off at around 100 kts, roughly seconds prior to their V1/VR call. That's not a whole lot of time to recognize the mistake and call the abort. 99.9999% of the time that capt doesn't turn onto the wrong runway, and 99.9999% of the times he does, the F/O would've noticed and corrected him. But it didn't add up that day, hopefully it helps re-focus those of still flying today, but I refuse to vilify and declare negligence on a crew (a relatively experienced crew at that) for one, albeit costly, mistake.