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Kentucky plane crash kills 49

(Reuters)
Updated: 2006-08-28 06:37

A Comair jet crashed and burned in a Kentucky horse pasture on Sunday after a failed takeoff, killing all but one of the 50 people aboard, authorities said.

A Comair Bombardier CRJ-200 regional jet similar to the one that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, yesterday morning is shown in this file photo. Comair Flight 5191 went down a mile from Lexington's airport shortly after takeoff. At least one person survived. [AP]

Flight 5191, a Canadair CRJ-100 bound for Atlanta, apparently used the wrong runway at Blue Grass Airport, one that was much shorter and not meant to handle commercial flights, an aviation source said.

Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board and officials of Comair, a unit of bankrupt Delta Air Lines, declined to discuss a suspected cause.

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 U.S.-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, the aviation source said.

The airport's two runways -- one 3,400 feet (1 km) long, the other 7,000 feet (2.1 km) -- intersect, and the pilots of the jet made by Montreal-based Bombardier Inc. had been cleared to use the longer of the two.

There are indications the ill-fated plane never got airborne and crashed through a fence before coming to rest in a field, 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.

Forty-nine of the 50 people aboard were killed. One of the two pilots, first officer James Polehinke, was pulled alive from the wreckage by three police officers. The survivor 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 several news briefings.

WEATHER NOT A FACTOR

The predawn 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 takeoff 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 U.S. cities, Canada and the Bahamas.

Delta entered bankruptcy in September 2005.

The plane's flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder were both recovered, officials said.

The last major U.S. 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 U.S. 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.

The Kentucky crash appeared to be the second-worst in terms of fatalities involving a jet built by Bombardier, the world's third-largest civil aircraft maker.

In November 2004, 47 passengers and six crew members died in the crash of a Bombardier regional jet flown by China Eastern Airlines in Baotou, in China's northern Inner Mongolia region. One person was killed on the ground.

Flights resumed at Lexington's 64-year-old airport, which serves half a dozen carriers, a few hours after the crash.