Sunday, August 27, 2006

Crash site confirmed

The Louisville Courier-Journal has the best photo I've seen yet:


(Photo credit Michael Hayman, The Courier-Journal)

UPDATE: here's another (also from the Courier-Journal):



You can clearly see the number "8" at the end of the runway, and how the planes crash site, in the lower right of the photo, is along the line of runway 26/8, the wrong runway. A slightly out-of-date aerial view of this site can be found here on Google Maps. Note the crummy state of runway 26/8 -- just another reason to be completely shocked that the pilots took off from the wrong runway.

CNN is talking now as if there's a chance that Comair 5191 could have taken off from 22 (the correct runway) and then banked hard to the right to crash where it did. But that seems extremeley unlikely. Taking off on runway 22 and then crashing where the photo indicates, with a crash line that is also in line with runway 26, would be a miracle of the highest order.

For some reason, the New York Times crops the above photo exclude the runway. I have no idea why they would have done this, since the complete photo essentially fully corroborates the "wrong runway" hypothesis.

UPDATE: Doug Petch points out how annoying the coverage has been so far. His main point, I think:
What does it say about the local outlets’ news gathering capabilities that all three stations waited for their parent networks to provide confirmation before standing 100% behind the “wrong runway” storyline?
Amen. The local guys are on the ground. They should have been able to advance the wrong runway theory almost immediately. Why didn't they? The victims and families of this horrible accident deserve the truth and they deserve it right away.

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