Plane crash claims 49 in Kentucky

Published 9:00 pm Saturday, August 26, 2006

LEXINGTON, Ky. – A commuter jet crashed during take off early Sunday and burst into flames, killing 49 people and leaving the lone survivor in critical condition. Investigators were trying to determine if the plane was on the wrong runway and ran out of pavement.

Comair Flight 5191, a CRJ-200 regional jet, crashed at 6:07 a.m. in a field less than mile from the runway, said Kathleen Bergen, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration.

It was the country’s worst domestic airplane accident in nearly six years.

The cause of the crash wasn’t immediately clear, but the location of the wreckage raised questions about the runways at Blue Grass Airport. The burning plane was just off the end of the airport’s 3,500-foot-long general aviation runway, an unlit strip built at a V shape to the longer main runway. According to the Federal Aviation Administration, it would have been too short for the CRJ-200 jet.

The plane was largely intact when rescuers reached it, and authorities said they were able to get one crew member out alive, but the fire was devastating.

“They were taking off, so I’m sure they had a lot of fuel on board,” Fayette County Coroner Gary Ginn said. “Most of the injuries are going to be due to fire-related deaths.”

“We are going to say a mass prayer before we begin the work of removing the bodies,” he said.

FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said the agency had no indication that terrorism was involved in any way. Both flight recorders, which should help investigators determine what went wrong, were sent to Washington, D.C., for analysis.

Lexington police spokesman Sean Lawson said investigators were looking into whether the pilot was on the wrong runway and discovered it too late.

The main runway at Lexington’s airport is 7,000 feet long, while a daytime-only, general aviation runway is about 3,500 feet.

That type of plane needed 4,500 feet to 5,000 feet before it lifts off, said Paul Czysz, professor emeritus of aerospace engineering at Saint Louis University.

Czysz said aerial images of the wreck indicate it was almost inconceivable that the airplane could have taken off on the longer runway because its nose is almost parallel with the shorter one. Also, trees at the end of the shorter runway were damaged, he said.

“Sometimes with the intersecting runways, pilots go down the wrong one,” Czysz said. “It doesn’t happen very often.”

That’s what happened on Oct. 31, 2000, when a Singapore Airlines jumbo et crashed at Taiwan’s Chiang Kai-Shek International Airport after it took a wrong turn down a runway that had been closed for repairs and plowed through construction equipment. The SQ006 crash killed 83 people.

The three-member flight crew aboard the plane Comair plane was experienced and had been flying that airplane for some time, said Comair President Don Bornhorst. He said the plane’s maintenance was up to date and said “we are absolutely, totally committed to doing everything humanly possible to determine the cause of this accident.”

“One of the most damaging things that can happen to an investigation of this magnitude is for speculation or for us to guess at what may be happening,” he said.

Most of the passengers aboard the crashed plane had planned to connect to other flights in Atlanta and did not have family waiting for them, said the Rev. Harold Boyce, a volunteer chaplain at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport.

One woman was there expecting her sister on the flight. The two had planned to fly together to catch an Alaskan cruise, he said.

“Naturally, she was very sad,” Boyce said. “She was handling it. She was in tears.”

The only survivor of the crash, identified by Bornhorst as first officer James M. Polehinke, was in surgery at the University of Kentucky hospital Sunday morning.

Bornhorst identified the three crew members as Capt. Jeffrey Clay, who was hired by Comair in 1999, Polehinke, who was hired in 2002, and flight attendant Kelly Heyer, hired in 2004.

The plane had undergone routine maintenance as recently as Saturday, Bornhorst said. Comair, a subsidiary of Delta Air Lines Inc. based in the Cincinnati suburb of Erlanger, Ky., purchased that plane in January 2001, and all maintenance was normal as far as the information Comair had Sunday morning, he said.

The plane had 14,500 flight hours, “consistent with aircraft of that age,” Bornhorst said.

Investigators from the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board were at the scene, and Bornhorst said the airline was working to contact relatives of the passengers.

Outside the terminal lobby at midmorning, Paul Richardson of Winchester wanted to know what happened to a friend from Florida who was on the plane.

“He took the earlier flight so he could get back to family,” Richardson said. He said airport officials were taking friends and family on buses to a nearby hotel.

Rick Queen, who works for Turfway Realty in Lexington, said his father-in-law, Les Morris, was on the flight. He said Comair brought all the family members into a room at a Lexington hotel, told them the plane had crashed and family members died, then gave them an 800 phone number to call.

“This is one of the worst handled events in Lexington history,” Queen said as he left he left the hotel, where two officers guarded the entrance.

Delta Chief Executive Officer Gerald Grinstein issued a statement expressing condolences for those involved.

“We at Delta Air Lines want to extend our heartfelt sympathy and full support to everyone affected by the Comair accident, including family and friends of those onboard as well as our Comair colleagues. We are working closely with Comair to provide the resources necessary to assist in any way possible with this tragic event,” Grinstein said.

The flight attendant, Kelly Heyer, lived in the Cincinnati area and recently had been appointed as a base representative for the flight attendant union, said Tracey Riley, a union recording secretary and fellow Comair flight attendant.

“He was a standup individual,” Riley said. “He was very professional, loved the job.”

Newlyweds Jon Hooker of London, Ky., and Scarlett Parsley were also aboard. they had been married in front of 300 friends and family members on Saturday night, said former Kentucky baseball coach Keith Madison.

The crash marks the end of what has been called the “safest period in aviation history” in the United States. There has not been a major crash since Nov. 12, 2001, when American Airlines Flight 587 plunged into a residential neighborhood in Queens, N.Y., killing 265 people, including five on the ground.