Regarding The Crash This Morning In Lexington, Kentucky Of A Comair CRJ-200.

So far, the accident appears to be the result of a mistake on the part of the pilots which we would expect no competent and highly-trained pilot would make: taking off on the wrong runway; in this case, one adequate for light planes but too short for an airliner.

ABC News quoted Paul Czysz, professor emeritus of aerospace engineering at Saint Louis University, as saying aerial images of the wreck indicate it was almost inconceivable that the airplane could have taken off on the longer runway because its nose is almost parallel with the shorter one.

CNN says radar identifying the plane's location shortly before it crashed indicates that it took off from the wrong runway. Also, trees at the end of the shorter runway were damaged.

To see the airport layout, see: http://www.google.com/maps?hl=en&lr=lang_en%7Clang_es&client=safari&q=airport&near=Lexington,+KY&radius=0.0&cid=38049167,-84500278,15407401205053888660&li=lmd&z=14&t=m.

Weather

Weather was not a factor. The Lexington airport weather at 5:54 AM (crash was at 6:07)
75 degrees, 8 miles visibility, wind south-southest at 8 mph.

To understand what the news is saying, look at runway 22. What that means is, if the pilot was taking off on runway 22, his compass would be reading 220 degrees, heading southwest.

If he taxied from the terminal and took the first left, rather than the second left, he would have entered runway 26. If he lined up with that runway, his compass would be reading 260, or almost directly west.

Proper air discipline requires that upon entering a runway and lining up for takeoff, you check your compass with the heading of the intended runway.

If, indeed, the pilot took off on runway 26 rather than runway 22, there may not have been enough runway to gain the proper speed to fly before reaching the end of the runway.

The visibility was good. Thus there is no way to explain why the tower did not tell the pilot he was on the wrong runway.

How Could Any Professional Pilot Make Such A Mistake?

There is no way to understand why the pilot did not see how short the runway was before beginning takeoff. And, even more amazing, how could the pilot possibly not recognize the runway was too short during the takeoff roll?

There are mistakes a trained competent pilot can make, but procedures and cross-checks are set up to prevent them. Occasionally there is an accident which involves a mistake no competent and properly-trained pilot would ever make, unless impaired, because the mistake is just too basic.

In aviation, it is not acceptable to write something off as a mistake. We insist on understanding why a pilot would make a mistake we would expect no professional pilot could make.

When a pilot makes a mistake that any competent and properly-trained pilot would never make when alert, what else can we consider other than impairment?

Fatigue-related Accidents

Recall the Air France accident last year in Canada; there was no way a well-trained, experienced pilot would make the mistake of landing half-way down a runway (particularly when wet) unless impaired. In that case, the pilots had been on cockpit duty about nine hours; US regulations do not allow that. If a flight is more than eight hours, an additional relief pilot is mandated.

Recall the American Airlines crash in South American in 1995; again, a mistake no competent and well-trained pilot would make. The pilots had been on duty for an excessive number of hours.

Same was true in the American Airlines crash in Little Rock in 1999.

There is no adequate reason to explain why the pilot, who is well-trained and well-qualified would make such a mistake if he had all his wits about him.

Alcohol Versus Fatigue

People get upset at the idea of a pilot having the slightest amount of alcohol. We are very sensitive to the idea of a pilot drinking. We seem to have no understanding at all that inadequate rest can cause as much or more impairment than alcohol.

Research in Australia and new Zealand showed that after 17 hours without sleep, a person is as impaired as they would be by a blood alcohol level of 0.05 percent. Research shows similar results due to a sleep deficit due to several nights of inadequate rest.

http://www.sleepnete.com/shift2/messages/397.html.

http://www.upliftprogram.com/h_brain_05.html#h50.

With the financial pressures on airlines that are present today, every possible attempt is made to reduce expenses. It is probably not possible for a non-pilot to understand how extreme the fatigue is which pilots routinely endure.

After deregulation, when I was at Pan Am, I recall one of the pilots saying, "I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired!"

Let's consider how much time this Comair crew had between flights. We don't know where the crew came from when they flew into Lexington. But Delta's main hub is Atlanta, and the flight that crashed was headed for Atlanta. The previous night, two Comair flights came into Lexington from Atlanta. One was scheduled to arrive at 8:00 PM; the other at 12:05 AM.

If we assume the crew came in on the 8:00 PM flight, and their wakeup time at the hotel was 3:40 AM (one hour to get ready to be picked up at the hotel; twenty minutes to the airport to arrive an hour before departure), If they got to sleep at 10:00 PM, they got 5:40 minutes of sleep. They may have had a similar situation the night before; we don't have information on that. Or, if the crew came in at 12:05 AM and hung around the airport until reporting at operations at 5:00 AM, that isn't a great situation either.

According to some news reports, this crew flew into Lexington just after midnight. If this is correct, the ill-fated crew was doing what is called in the regional airline industry a “stand-up overnight.” At the same time, a spokesman for Comain claims the crew had "legal rest". How is that possible? The pilots may be been given "legal rest" from 1:00 PM the previus day until 9:00 PM. Management in the airline industry takes the position that if you are given the required number of hours off AT ANY TIME DAY OR NIGHT, that is sufficient. The fact that it may be impossible to get a good night's sleep between 1:00 PM and 9:00 PM is ignored as inconvenient for the needs of the airline. It is considered the pilots' responsibility to BE rested; refusing to take a flight because the rest period did not leave the pilots feeling rested enough is unacceptable. But reasonable person can immediately recognize that a rest period during the middle of the time one is usually awake can hardly cause a person to be "bright-eyed and bushy-tailed" to fly close the midnight and hang around all night to fly out at 6:00 AM. A pilot who cancels due to fatigue can be fired because it is consider the pilot's responsibily not to be fatigued if so-called "legal rest" has been built into the schedule without regard for the facts of life about sleep.

Though shift workers who are routinely working the "graveyard shift" can adapt, the schedule for a pilot may provide "legal rest" during the night in one twenty-four hour period, and during the day in the next twenty-four hour period, day after day after day.

The cumulative result is stupor. Though the pilots can walk, they can't think. Any airline pilot can tell you of such problems, and any airline pilot can tell you their only choice is to fly fatigued on a routine basis or leave the profession.

The airlines have no choice; they MUST push the pilots as hard as other airlines do. And, to gain a competitive edge, they push their pilots harder than others do. Since no airline can act unilaterally, this will continue until the government acts; which means, no time soon.

JetBlue is a case in point. First understand that the Federal regulations limited duty times are woefully inadequate to prevent killer fatigue. But JetBlue wanted to push its pilots PAST even these inadequate Federal rules and lobbied Congress to weaken the Federal limits.

Safety Doesn't Sell Tickets

As most of us recognize, the flying public looks for the cheapest fare. It is assumed that the safety at one airline is about the same as the safety at another airline.

When we consider crashes versus the number of flights, and consider stats from www.airsafe.com.

Airlines with more than 10 million flights

• Southwest has a 0.00 rate in 15.26 million flights
  
• Continental has a 0.14 rate in 10.39 million flights
  
• Delta has a 0.17 rate in 24.80 million flights
  
• Northwest has a has a 0.21 rate in 12.51 million flights
  
• US Airways has a 0.28 rate in 17.63 million flights
  
• United Airlines has a 0.31 rate in 21.90 million flights
  
• American has a 0.40 rate in 25.08 million flights

Airlines with 1 to 10 million flights

• America West has a 0.00 rate in 03.53 million flights
  
• Alaska has a 0.33 rate in 06.13 million flights
  
• AirCanada has a 0.33 rate in 04.75 million flights

Airlines with less than 1 million flights

• Aloha has a 0.56 rate in 01.77 million flights
  
• ATA has a 0.00 rate in 00.69 million flights
  
• Hawaiian has a 0.00 rate in 00.66 million flights
  
• JetBlue has a 0.00 rate in 00.35 million flights
  
• AirTran has a 0.94 rate in 01.06 million flights
  
• Midwest Express has a 1.92 rate in 00.52 million flights

We can see that there is indeed a difference in accident rate. But since the rate is low, few non-anxious passengers will consider statistics when purchasing a ticket.

Anxious passengers don't consider statistics either, because the only statistic that helps is no accidents at all. And some look at that as an indication that the airline "is due" an accident. Statistics do not help reduce anxiety.

Since safety really doesn't sell tickets, we will continue to have accidents in which fatigue is a factor.

So we are pretty much stuck with the situation we are in. Accidents will take place from time to time at a rate which will not lead to political action. Since we can't change the situation, and since rationally we know it is OK to fly (as flying is safer than staying home and doing routine driving), what can we do about anxiety?

As someone said today, the problem is that every few months there is a crash, and he can't get that out of his mind. Actually that isn't true in the U.S. It is more like every few years. But even so, there is a psychological problem. Fortunately, we can keep such thoughts from causing undue stress when they come to mind.

It's A Left-brain, Right-brain Thing

The left brain recognizes that crashes occur, and the left brain can recognize that as fact and say, “so what; that's not enough to be a problem; nothing is absolutely safe; I take risks greater than that every day.”

But the right brain is where stress hormones are triggered. The right brain cannot do fractions. It cannot conceive of "one in ten million". It can only see the one. When it sees the one disaster, it causes hormones to be released.

There are three ways the right brain can avoid releasing stress hormones:

• we are absolutely safe (obviously not true)
  
  
• you have control in your hands that can prevent disaster (maybe, but often is illusion)
  
  
• the Strengthening Exercise which “coats” disaster thoughts with a protective emotion so the amygdala does not react automatically, freeing the rational left brain to decide.

If you do the Strengthening Exercise properly, you will get protection from that WHEN you fly, but not when you think of flying. That is as good as we can do.

When thoughts of flying cause emotion which gets in the way of making rational decisions, we need to recognize that it is our intellectual responsibility to not allow emotion to blind us to reality nor to prevent us from doing what is in our best interest.

Sure it would be nice if we didn't have emotions to cause conflict, the being a grown up requires us to be aware of conflicts and use our best mental efforts to act in accord with our best interests.

We can help with the emotional side. Go to www.fearofflying.com and see the free video. If you want more help, order the SOAR Video Course at: http://www.fearofflying.com/store.shtml.

You may want to read an article on commuter airlines by Patrick Smith, airline pilot, author, and air travel columnist. Patrick was a regional airline pilot for more than five years, and has written about the safety of smaller jets and commuter planes many times, including this widely read article:


http://www.salon.com/tech/col/smith/2005/02/25/askthepilot125/index.html