A dark airport and two runways pointing in a similar direction…
Yesterday’s airliner crash in Lexington, Kentucky has resulted in a few friends asking how it might have happened.
It was dark, one hour before sunrise, and hazy (see http://www.airnav.com/airport/KLEX). Runway 26 and Runway 22 start almost right next to each other (see official FAA airport diagram). The short runway, 26 (oriented in magnetic direction 260), would be reached first by an airplane taxiing from the terminal. The 3500′ of runway is very comfortable for a slow piston-powered airplane, tight for a light business jet, and more or less impossible for a fully loaded airliner.
This is not the kind of mistake that two professional pilots would be likely to make. If it hadn’t been dark and hazy, the control tower would probably have noticed the mistake and called to suggest aborting the takeoff.
How can we pilots protect against this kind of error? In airplanes with a heading bug, always set it up for runway heading before leaving the runup area. If you are positioned on a runway, preparing for takeoff, and the HSI is not lined up with the heading bug, this gives an extra opportunity to notice that something is wrong. Of course, the airline crews usually do things this way and it didn’t help the folks in Lexington.
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