Only One Was On Duty At Time Of Comair Accident

The FAA has added a second controller to the weekend night shift at Blue Grass Airport in Lexington, KY following Sunday's crash of a Comair CRJ-100 that killed 49 people onboard, and critically injured the plane's first officer.

"We have restored the second controller on the weekend overnight shift," said FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown. The Associated Press reports she declined to give a reason for the decision.

As Aero-News reported, only one controller was on duty just after 6:00 am Sunday, when the airliner took off from runway 26 at the airport -- the shorter of two runways at KLEX, and not long enough to allow the plane to reach sufficient speed.

Flight 5191 ran off the end of the runway, impacted trees and caught fire.

Many postulate that had a second controller been on duty in the tower at the time, he or she may have seen as the airliner lined up on the wrong runway -- and could have warned the plane's crew. A similar accident at the airport was prevented in 1993 by an alert controller.

One analyst, however, told the AP a second set of eyes may not necessarily have caught the error.

"You clear him for takeoff and that's the end of it," said John Nance. "It's not the duty of the controller to baby-sit every flight. It would have been great if he or she had, but they have other duties up there."

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