Sunday, August 27, 2006

Don Bornhorst, President of Comair, declines to comment on cause of crash

After what looks to be a serious blow to Comair, the President of Comair just held an afternoon press conference, but gave few hints as to cause other than to give the most bare-bones of details, such as the flight number, the status of their efforts to inform families, the plane's tail number, the kinds of engines and number of seats on the plane, that both pilots were experienced, and the fact that Comair does not what to "interfere with the investigation."

No answer to the question, "did the plane take off from the wrong runway," other than to call such questions "speculation." He has not been to the crashsite. I should add that Bornhorst is clearly very broken up about what has happened.

All I can say is that if the plane took off from runway 22 and crashed and the upwind end of runway 26, then Comair 5191 would have to have been "magic." Comair must be looking down the bad end of a very bad lawsuit, and they know it. As such, no comment on which runway the plane used.

And I want to repeat what I said from the last post -- it is so very, very difficult to believe that the pilots both missed the fact that they were on the wrong runway. The runways look different. They are differently lit. Runway 26 is narrower. These pilots know very well that one runway is shorter than the other. And yet, they appear to have used the wrong one.

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