Comair flight crashes in Kentucky.

[beaky]

Turns out the survivor is the FO- he's based at KJFK, and he's recovering from emergency surgery. Local cops and airport security pulled him out of the wreck, but couldn't save anybody else.

Aside from his personal good fortune, a lot of other people may benefit from his report; should be interesting and educational to hear his story.

[expat]

Aside from his personal good fortune, a lot of other people may benefit from his report; should be interesting and educational to hear his story.

That would depend; if he is as cooperative as the surviving F/O on the American Airlines McDonnell Douglas MD-82 into Little Rock, Arkansas then he will be more interested in saving his own skin. Lets hope not.

Matt

[beefhole]

Recent reports indicate the lighting was "out of service" on 22 (the logner runway).

[Chris_F]

I can speak from experience that when I do something a million times it becomes second nature.  When something becomes second nature I cease to conscously think about it.  Often I can perform this act indefinately without fail, but in some rare cases it is at this point that I make obvious mistakes.  So I can see how a crew flying out of an airport they've departed from 100 times before could make a mistake and take off from the wrong runway.

[mrjake2002]

i thought the pilot was unfamilier with the airport but had flown the aircraft many times before.

[beefhole]

i thought the pilot was unfamilier with the airport but had flown the aircraft many times before.

Yes.

First and foremost, hwo familiar a pilot is with an airport should be irrelevant.  However, Chris' point about doing the same thing a million times is exactly what I said before-doesn't matter how proffessional the crew, it leaves the door open to even just a little bit of carelessness-especially in these overworked, underpaid regional crews.

[RitterKreuz]

an over worked underpaid and sometimes fatigued crew is right.

start out at 9 or 10am on the first day and fly 7 legs until 8:40PM then take the 20 minute van ride to the hotel, shower, brush your teeth, arrange wakeup call, and eat whatever you can find to call "Dinner" by the time you drift off  to sleep its 11:00pm or later... here comes the 5:00 am wakeup call to do it all over again for 3 more days of the same. then on your last day when your ready to go home and the last passenger deplanes an your done  and its time to hit the days off stretch the company calls and wants you to do 2 more legs because they are out of crews for the day. BS your so drained by the time you get to your day off stretch you mostly just lay around the house sleeping!

regional airline pilots are only paid a per diem and for the flight hours NOTHING for the hours spent waiting between flights. so at the end of two weeks when your pay check arrives its a big dissapointment when its only $600  :-/

think about that. if your an unmarried young person with little or no bills other than say a car, its not too bad. but throw a wife in the mix, all kinds of living expenses that are musts (electric, water, car, fuel etc) and your sunk at the end of every month.

[beefhole]

Aye, I don't think my CFI's lasted four months and he's getting out for a "normal" job. (he's lucky, he's highly qualified in fields other than aviation)

[RitterKreuz]

first officer turnover rate...

therin sits the other side of the coin... those who survive the difficult years make it to the majors and the 100K+ annual income bracket.

whenever someone leaves the job because of stress, disillusioned, cant make ends meet whatever everyone who stays moves one number up.   You would be amazed what the attrition is for First officers.

I wonder how many millions of dollars a year that costs these regionals... to train a person, put them on the line and then have to replace them 4 months later with someone who has half the experience. multiply that times the dozens of FOs who bail every month and thats one helluva lot of money.  i dont understand why they dont just start the FO's off in the 30K a year bracket. the company would have nearly no costs in replacing these individuals as they would surely stay on board!

the answer IMHO to staffing and rest period problems is...

1. let the company figure out how many crews they need system wide, then increase that number by 25%

2. figure out how many aircraft they need and increase it by 1 more plane per every 2 destinations on the map.

3. Increase the quality of life if it's people through decent wages and good pensions and you will have a loyal and dedicated worker group.

[Mushroom_Farmer]

I also heard today that the taxiway had been reconfigured recently.
It's starting to sound like a chain of unfortunate events, which is how most tragedies occur.

[beefhole]

When's the last time we had an aviation accident in the US that was largely pilot error? ie. nothing wrong with the plane, no severe wx, no mistakes by ATC (perhaps the tower controller should have realized he was holding short of the wrong runway, but the accident was not ATC's fault).  I can't remember the last time.

[Fly2e]

LEXINGTON, Ky. - The taxi route for commercial jets using Blue Grass Airport

[beefhole]

CNN just did a recreation using "special software" (FS2004) and it was actually done very well.

[Brett_Henderson]

I wonder how many of us have taken a CRJ-200 to KLEX and tried taking off on 26 ?

[RitterKreuz]

lol good question


it wasnt pretty when i tried it.  :-/