Only Suit To Reach Trial After 2006 Accident

A jury has awarded $7 million to survivors of Bryan Keith Woodward, who was a passenger aboard Comair Flight 5191. The flight attempted to depart a runway that was too short at Blue Grass Airport in Lexington, KY, and ran off the end of the runway. Woodward's is the only case to come to trial of the 49 people who were killed in the accident.

ABC News reports that the award announced Monday is just the first phase of the suit. A separate jury will determine if the airline, a subsidiary of Delta, was negligent in the accident. That trial, which will be sometime next year, would make the family eligible for punitive damages.

The National Transportation Safety Board determined the probable cause(s) of the accident were the flight crewmembers's failure to use available cues and aids to identify the airplane's location on the airport surface during taxi and their failure to cross-check and verify that the airplane was on the correct runway before takeoff. Contributing to the accident were the flight crew's nonpertinent conversation during taxi, which resulted in a loss of positional awareness, and the FAA's failure to require that all runway crossings be authorized only by specific air traffic control clearances.

Most of the other cases were settled out of court. In February of this year, Lexington's Blue Grass Airport (LEX) closed Runway 8/26, and then built a new, longer, realigned runway.

FMI: www.ntsb.gov, www.bluegrassairport.com