The captain is, of course, ultimately responsible for a successful flight and has to be sure that he is doing the right thing. But in this case, I would argue that he did not realize there was a problem until he ran out of runway. These pilots obviously made mistakes, but we must learn what caused those mistakes and prevent them from happening in the future. Some on this discussion cannot comprehend how someone can do something that stupid. I would ask people to withhold judgment and try to learn as much as we can to prevent similar disasters in the future. We are all human and sometimes the information we observe does not add up right although we are convinced it does. Obviously the messages they had from their observations did not provide the necessary danger signals to warn them that something was very wrong.
Here is my take on what happened:
Some of the airport drawings on this thread seem to indicate that some changes were made recently in the taxiways and the main runway. The earlier version has the main runway at the end of the taxiway. When the plane gets to the end of the taxiway the pilots turn left and are on the runway, they have passed the short runway without taking much note of it. The major construction change seems to have been to add an FAA mandated “safety zone” at the end of the long runway and the taxiway between the short runway and the long one was eliminated. The end of the runway is very near a highway. Lack of a “safety zone” was noted in last winter’s Southwest Airlines accident at Midway where the plane did not stop until it hit a van in the street and killed a 7 year old boy.
I have seen no information on whether the pilots were regulars on this field, although I see that Clay was a resident of Kentucky. If they were somewhat familiar with this field , they probably automatically turned left (and not noting the runway number) when they reached the end of the taxiway. It being close to daylight, they may have concluded that the runway lights had been turned off to early. (It would be interesting to know what they said in their discussion about the lights.) Such an occurrence is not uncommon with lights on timers and the changing length of daylight. I suspect they were distracted by the lack of runway lightning and did not observe the runway number. Unfortunately, due to the 9-ll Islamic terrorists, the door to the pilots area is closed now, but I remember from the old days, both people in the front seats are quite busy flipping switches, doing communications and whatever else is necessary to get the plane ready to get off the ground during the taxiing.
I do not know where the plane sits on the end of the runway before the takeoff run. The runway numbers seem to be quite near the end and may not be visible once the plane is on the runway.
See #944.