Comments on: COMAIR crash and Tower Staffing

By: Steven M. Vandiver

Steven M. Vandiver — Sun, 03 Sep 2006 17:10:06 +0000

You are absolutely correct. The PIC is just that, and adjudication of commercial air traffic incidents follows admirality law. The very fact that the professional aircrew earlier boarded the wrong airplane indicates that they weren’t functioning well, even as a team. Several common sense, very common pre-takeoff checks are, “flight controls free and correct” (the test pilot of one of the new VLJs was killed recently when the controls were re-rigged improperly and he didn’t identify this condition prior to takeoff), “fuel sufficient for the flight”, and “compass heading agrees with assigned runway”. In the case of your comment, neither pilot verified the latter. Strange also is the fact that this type aircraft would have had a flight director and the command bars should have indicated a turn during the takeoff roll. I am sure this accident will be used as a teaching tool at Flight Safety and elsewhere. Let’s be careful in our airplanes.

By: Eric

Eric — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 15:40:48 +0000

I also understand that the one ATC employee on scene had only 2 hours of sleep before he came on duty. Just like in medicine and driving, exhaustion can be a killer.

By: shadowfax

shadowfax — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 23:14:44 +0000

Agreed that primary responsibility lies with the flight crew. But remember that NTSB and FAA try to focus on systems failures and not individual errors. Maybe better taxiway diagrams and signage would help — I have a devil of a time navigating by the signage even in the day and at airports I am familiar with. Very possibly a controller dedicated to ground control would have said “Hey guys, you’re not gonna try to use that runway, are you?”

By: dn

dn — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 21:54:54 +0000

This story says the captain and first officer also first boarded and turned on the power in the wrong plane. It will be interesting to see their drug tests.