Posted on 08/30/2006 2:59:45 AM PDT by Clive
LEXINGTON, Ky. --The lone air traffic controller on duty the morning Comair Flight 5191 crashed cleared the jet for takeoff, then turned his back to do some “administrative duties” as the aircraft veered down the wrong runway, a U.S. government investigator said Tuesday.
Separately, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration acknowledged violating its own policies when it assigned only one controller to the Lexington tower.
The commuter jet struggled to become airborne and crashed in a field before daybreak Sunday, killing 49 of the 50 people aboard, after taking off from a 1,067-metre runway, instead of an adjoining one that was twice as long. Experts said the plane needed at least 1,524 metres for takeoff. The sole survivor, first officer James Polehinke, was in critical condition Tuesday.
The air traffic controller had an unobstructed view of the runways and had cleared the aircraft for takeoff from the longer runway, said U.S. National Transportation Safety Board member Debbie Hersman.
Then, “he turned his back to perform administrative duties,” Hersman said.
“At that point, he was doing a traffic count.”
The controller, whose name was not released, had been working at the Lexington airport for 17 years and was fully qualified, Hersman said.
Polehinke was flying the plane when it crashed but it was the flight’s captain, Jeffrey Clay, who taxied the aircraft onto the wrong runway, Hersman said. Clay then turned over the controls to Polehinke for takeoff, the investigator said.
Polehinke was pulled from the burning plane after the crash but has not been able to tell investigators why the pilots tried to take off from the wrong runway.
Both crew members were familiar with the Lexington airport, Hersman said. She said Clay had been there six times in the last two years and Polehinke had been there 10 times in the last two years - but neither had been to the airport since a taxiway repaving project just a week earlier that had altered the taxiway route.
Earlier Tuesday, the FAA admitted it violated a policy, outlined in a November 2005 directive, requiring control tower observations and radar approach operations be handled by separate controllers.
FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said the controller at the Lexington airport had to do his own job - keeping track of airplanes on the ground and in the air up to a few kilometres away - as well as radar duties.
Before Hersman’s briefing Tuesday, the NTSB said Polehinke was flying the plane; it made no mention of Clay being the one who taxied the plane into position.
The crew checked in at 5:15 a.m. EDT but boarded the wrong plane at first, Hersman said. They started preparations before a ramp worker alerted them to the error. Even with the delay, passengers boarded on time and a ramp worker found no problems during an inspection, she said.
The plane hit a fence and trees and crashed in a nearby field. Clay, 35, was killed along with another crew member and 47 passengers, including at least two Canadians.
The shorter runway at Blue Grass Airport is for daylight operation only and its lights have not worked since October 2001. NTSB officials said the cockpit voice recorder showed the pilots were talking about the absence of lights on the runway but they did not report it to the control tower.
Reporters were allowed to see the crash site Tuesday, which still smelled strongly of jet fuel and had been cordoned off with yellow police tape. Grass and trees surrounding remains of the airplane had been charred by the crash.
Nothing inside the cockpit was distinguishable, just a twisted mass of wires and wreckage. Parts of the engine were found several metres away and a large piece of the plane’s tail had smashed into a downed tree 50 metres away. A large plastic sheet on the ground was covering “personal items,” said NTSB spokesman Terry Williams.
The crash was the deadliest in the U.S. since Nov. 12, 2001, when American Airlines Flight 587 plunged into a residential neighbourhood in New York City, killing 265 people, including five on the ground. The bodies of the 49 victims in Kentucky were taken to the medical examiner’s office in Frankfort for autopsies.
The victims included Ottawa-based horseman Lyle Anderson, 55, and his girlfriend, Christina Anderson, who was not related.
Meanwhile, the Vancouver Sun said a third Canadian is believed to have been aboard. Langley, B.C., veterinary technician Anne Bailey failed to return home from Lexington on Sunday after attending a four-day seminar on horse care, the newspaper reported.
It quoted Bailey’s employer, veterinarian Dr. Edward Wiebe, as saying he was told by colleagues in Kentucky the 49-year-old woman had gone to the airport early Sunday to catch a commuter flight to Atlanta.
The Foreign Affairs Department in Ottawa would not comment on news reports, citing the Privacy Act and respect for the wishes of next of kin. However, a Foreign Affairs spokesman did confirm the death of a permanent resident of Canada aboard the plane who was not a Canadian citizen. The spokesman did not provide an identity.
Lots of sense on display in your post. Thanks for your informed perspective. Good read.
I hope they don't crucify this guy for doing his job. This was a routine flight and he was the only guy there. He obviously had other responsibilities as well. If anything, its the FAAs fault for not manning the tower properly.
True enough !
I agree. All these articles and headlines are trying to imply it was the controller's fault or at least the FAA. How was the controller to know that two pilots would turn down an unlit runway without either checking their heading or the signs?
FWIW, if the controller had worked at the airport for 17 year, he probably had heard about the incident in '93 where a plane almost took off from the wrong runway. A controller caught the mistake before the pilot could take off.
They were flustered and in a hurry because of this previous error.
Safe flying, whether commercial, military or private, is the result of teamwork between the pilot(s) in the cockpit and the controller(s) in the tower. Taxpayers spend a lot of money buying those control towers with all the glass windows so that controllers have a clear view of what is going on at and around the airport. As a team, they need to work together to check and cross-check one another.
When the teamwork breaks down, people get hurt or killed. IMO, that's what happened here.
A old instructor of mine once told me...." Every time a aircraft leaves the ground. it's a mistake, that begins a series of errors. It's your job to correct all those errors not just to touchdown but to the chocks and shut down"
Obviously he didn't believe it was truly a mistake but it was his way to try and instill a sense of vigilance.
The simplicity of this accident has us all reevaluating ourselves and our "habits".
This guy will have to live with his error for the rest of his life, always seeing the plane crash in the back of his mind. That alone is punishment.
I would assign 99% of the blame to the pilots, 1% to the FAA for understaffing, and 0% to the controller.
I'll wait for the NTSB report. Pity it never occurred to the controller, though, just to double check. Whether that was part of his job description or not.
I would say it is part of his job description, but he had other responsibilities. I think crew fatigue will also be a factor. Like you say it will come out in the NTSB report. And I imagine the controller has been continually been second guessing himself ever since the accident.
I worked in a control tower for three years. When operations are normal, it feels normal. Once I was doing administrative duties and something one of the other controllers said just didn't "sound" right. I perked up and immediately told the second controller to double check the last clearance...something sounded wrong. It was wrong and the order was corrected.
The controller here believed everything was normal. He had no clues that anything was wrong and had had lots of things to do with nobody to double check flight operations. You NEED more than one person in a tower. Period.
In reading this story, it seems that the pilots were mainly responsible. Many things that "didn't seem right" went on unquestioned. Were they tired? Overworked?
what was lighting conditions,
at the time of the wreck?
The poor guy alone in the tower at 6:00 a.m., or whenever the FAA deems it economical to slash the staffing, is required to perform the Local control, Ground control, Clearance delivery and Contoller-in-charge (administrative) duties at the same time. Is he qualified to work these positions? Yes. Can he provide the same level of service that one or two additional controllers can at the same time? No way.
The FAA has already put out a memorandum to the controller workforce stating its position the a Local controller is not responsible for the departing aircraft when clearing it for takeoff. My 18 years of working in a tower environment tell me otherwise. Although I now work as a radar controller, I recall that my duties as a Local controller included scanning the runway that the aircraft was to depart and observing it depart the intended runway as part of the "clearing" process that is integral to the directive of "Cleared for takeoff." Compressing many functions and tasks, properly spread among more controllers, does not a safe operation make.
The FAA can blow its smoke up the wazoo of Congress and the public, easily done since air traffic control is a pretty arcane art woven with rules and guidelines; but, the Controllers know otherwise. The families of the forty-nine who perished in Lexington should know that their plight is due to bureaucratic bungling, will sadly be likely joined by others in the future, and is due a better explanation than "Oops, stuff happens."
24 years CPC.
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