Kentucky Air Controller Says He Warned Senators

An air traffic controller alerted Kentucky senators 5 months before the Comair Flight 5191 crash killed 49 people on August 27th and that the Blue Grass Airport only had one person working the midnight shifts when it wasn't convenient for the management to have two people working. Even after being notified of a safety issue, the FFA did nothing to rectify the problem. An official from the National Air Traffic Controllers Association said " this is the FFA using safety as the trump card". Also, Comair is now saying that the diagram of the airport that the pilots of Flight 5191 received after the work was done on the runway did not "accurately reflect the airport signage."



Along with the crash being semi-blamed on only one air traffic controller being in the tower, they are also saying now that their might have been "discrepancies" in the airports diagrams. This might have contributed to the pilots error of taking off from the shorter runway. Apparently Comair has given its pilots a memo that the revised map, after the work done to the runways at the Blue Grass Airport, does "not accurately reflect the actual airport signage."

The maps/diagrams that the pilots received are put out by a company that is a subsidiary of Boeing. I would have thought that diagrams of airport runways for airlines and pilots would be published and distributed by the FFA, or at least would have to be checked and verified accurate if private companies were printing and distributing them for safety reasons.

So apparently their were quite a few other problems that had led to the crash and the death of 49 people on Comair Flight 5191 on August 27th.


Related News Links:
signonsandiego.com
news.monstersandcritics.com



[edit on 14-9-2006 by UM_Gazz]

If the map or diagram the pilots where looking at on Flight 5191 had the wrong "signage" which told them which runway to use, I would believe a lot of the blame should also be put on the company who produced/printed or distributed the document would have to shoulder alot of the blame. The pilots might have thought they were using the right runway.

Obviously they did think they were using the right runway, I really don't think experienced pilots like they were would use a runway that was too short just because they were in a hurry.