COMAIR FLIGHT 5191
Crashed on Runway: August 27, 2006 In Lexington, Kentucky
Air traffic control violations led to an avoidable tragic event that resulted in the deaths of 47 passengers and two crew members. Clifford Law Offices represented five families of crash victims, including the only Canadian passenger on board.
The sun hadn’t come up in Lexington, Kentucky, as Comair Flight 5191 started heading down the taxiway and onto the runway at Blue Grass Airport. The pilots chatted about various things that were not pertinent to the flight and operation of the aircraft, a clear violation of the ‘sterile cockpit rule,’ a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulation that prohibits non-essential conversations during critical moments of a flight.
Had the crew been fully focused on their taxi route, they would have noticed that they were on Runway 26, which was under construction and unlit, instead of Runway 22, a longer runway that provided enough distance for the Bombardier Canadair Regional Jet CRJ-100ER to safely lift off the ground.
By the time the pilots had realized their error, it was too late. The plane struck a berm and crashed through a fence as it tried to take off at the end of Runway 26. All 47 passengers and two crew members, the 35-year-old captain, and the 27-year-old flight attendant, were killed. The first officer survived.
Following the crash, family members came together for a memorial service. Three adult children who lost their mother in the incident sought answers and action. They called their lawyer in Lexington, who knew of Clifford Law Offices’ national reputation in aviation law and referred them to its founder and senior partner, Robert Clifford. In total, Clifford Law Offices took on the representation of five families.
Bob Clifford immediately flew to Lexington to meet the family. Faced with Kentucky laws and the possibility that the airport (which was under construction) would be altered, the firm filed a lawsuit within days of the crash as well as a motion seeking a restraining order and/or temporary injunction in state court. The firm’s quick action allowed them to ask that the taxiways and runways be kept in their current condition so that the firm’s experts and attorneys could be allowed to examine the surfaces as well as their configuration. Something obviously had gone terribly wrong, and the lawyers at Clifford Law Offices promised the grieving family members that they would determine liability.
In the months that followed, Clifford made numerous trips to Lexington on behalf of the five families who had hired the firm for answers. It would later be discovered that a number of things had gone wrong that morning. Careful analysis of the cockpit voice recorder indicated that the captain acknowledged that he would be taking off from Runway 22, which was 7,500 feet long, but taxied instead onto an unlit Runway 26, which was just 3,500 feet long. He then turned the controls over to the first officer for takeoff. The lone air traffic controller in the tower did not maintain visual contact with the aircraft and turned away to perform administrative duties, missing the deadly error that should have been unfolding before his eyes. It would later be revealed that the tower was understaffed, violating an internal policy.
Calculations demonstrated that the plane, with its carrying load, required a runway with a minimum length of 3,744 feet for safe takeoff. Even though the pilots remarked about the dark runway, they did nothing to check if their actions were right. They were wrong. Before the plane could achieve lift-off, it struck a berm, became airborne momentarily, clipped the airport fencing with its landing gear, collided with trees, and then crashed into a hill, separating the fuselage and cockpit from the tail. The plane, loaded with jet fuel, burst into flames.
Most of the 47 passengers who died were from Lexington. Many of them knew each other in this small, friendly town in the middle of the country that would never be the same. Mr. Clifford and his legal team helped all five families receive closure in a confidential outcome.