Crashed Kentucky plane used shorter runway [+video]

Relatives of victims gathered in Lexington. Picture / Reuters

LEXINGTON, Kentucky, Aug 27 Reuters - A Comair jet crashed and burned in a Kentucky pasture on Sunday after a failed takeoff on a short runway, killing all but one of the 50 people aboard, authorities said.

Flight 5191, a Canadair CRJ-100 bound for Atlanta, apparently ran off the end of a 1km-long runway designed for use by smaller planes, instead of the 2km runway suited for commercial flights, an investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board said.

"Ground scars" at the end of the shorter runway, a smashed perimeter fence and debris from the jet spread out over hundreds of feet (meters) indicated the plane's trajectory was from the shorter runway, NTSB investigator Debbie Hersman said.

Investigators will gather data to determine if the plane could have become airborne during the pre-dawn crash, she said.

"We'll try to pull information together and decide if the runway was too short," Hersman said.

Communications between the pilots and air traffic controllers and other data from the plane's "black boxes" - the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder - were being analyzed, she said.

Aviation experts said the aircraft could not have taken off if the pilots were unprepared for the shorter runway.

Comair, a unit of bankrupt Delta Air Lines, declined to discuss a suspected cause. The airline said the pilot was hired in 1999 and the co-pilot in 2002, and both had extensive experience with the plane.

There was no indication terrorism was involved, a Transportation Security Administration official said. Commercial aviation has been on heightened alert in recent weeks after authorities in London said they broke up a plot to bomb US-bound trans-Atlantic flights.

Comair Flight 5191 was the third of a dozen early morning takeoffs scheduled at Lexington. The two previous planes used the longer runway without incident, an aviation source said.

The airport's two runways intersect in a V-shape, and the pilots of the jet made by Montreal-based Bombardier Inc. had been cleared to use the longer of the two, the source said.

The plane exploded into flames, which likely caused most of the deaths, Fayette County Coroner Gary Ginn said. "It was horrible to see an airplane sitting in a field in an unnatural setting," he said.

The lone survivor was first officer James Polehinke, who was pulled alive from the wreckage by three police officers. Polehinke was in critical condition, a University of Kentucky Hospital spokesman said.

Lexington is the center of Kentucky's famed horse breeding industry, and the area is dotted with pristine farms surrounded by bright white wooden fences. The nearby Keeneland Race Course was the site of a few news briefings.

The weather was not likely a factor in the crash, Comair President Don Bornhorst said. The plane, obtained new in January 2001, had a clean maintenance record and the crew was well-rested and familiar with the aircraft, which had performed 12,048 take-off and landing "cycles," he added.

Airport director Michael Gobb said the shorter runway was not lighted, while work to repave and refurbish the longer one had been completed last week.

Comair started in Cincinnati in 1977 as a small commuter airline, then began its partnership with Delta in 1984 and became a wholly owned subsidiary in 2000. It has 168 CRJ jets and operates 920 daily flights to 110 US cities, Canada and the Bahamas.

Delta entered bankruptcy in September 2005.

The plane's flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder were both recovered and the information was being analyzed, the NTSB said.

The last major US airline crash involved an American Airlines jetliner that crashed in Queens, New York, in November 2001, killing 265 people.

The most recent crash involving a US commercial airliner also involved a feeder carrier, Air Midwest. That plane crashed and burned immediately after takeoff in North Carolina, killing 21, in January 2003.

- REUTERS