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I just got word this morning about the plane crash that happened in Lexington, KY which is not far from where I am at. Right now, The news is a big thing going on here in KY and all the local/national medias are buzzing.
CNN.com - 49 killed, one survivor, in Kentucky plane crash - Aug 27, 2006
49 killed, one survivor, in Kentucky plane crash
POSTED: 2:41 p.m. EDT, August 27, 2006
(CNN) -- Forty-nine of the 50 people aboard Delta Flight 5191 were killed when the aircraft crashed Sunday morning shortly after takeoff from Blue Grass Airport in Lexington, Kentucky, according to Fayette County Coroner Gary Ginn.
Ginn said he believes most people died from fire-related causes "rather than smoke inhalation."
Flight 5191 -- operated by Delta Air Lines' commuter carrier, Comair -- was en route to Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, where it was scheduled to land at 7:18 a.m. ET.
First responders extricated the crew's first officer -- the crash's lone survivor -- according to Blue Grass Airport's Chief of Public Safety Scott Lanter.
They "observed movement at the front of the aircraft, and then extricated the first officer from the nose of the airplane," Lanter said.
Comair President Don Bornhorst identified the first officer as James Polehinke.
Polehinke was in critical condition at University of Kentucky Chandler Medical Center in Lexington, airline and hospital officials said.
There were 47 passengers and three crew members aboard the flight. One of the passengers was off duty, sitting in the plane's jump seat, Blue Grass Airport Director Michael Gobb said.
Flight 5191 was cleared for take-off at 6:05 a.m. ET, which was the last communication between the pilot and air-traffic controllers at the airport, Federal Aviation Administration officials said.
The plane crashed about a half-mile from the end of the runway, said Bornhorst, Comair's president.
Two sources told CNN that radar identifying the plane's location shortly before it crashed indicates that it took off from the wrong runway -- one that was 3,500 feet shorter than the other.
The Bombardier Canadian Regional Jet (CRJ)-200 was cleared to take off from runway 22, which is more than 7,000 feet long, the sources said.
Instead, it took off from runway 26, which is 3,500 feet long, the sources said.
That length is "pretty short for that type of aircraft," former National Transportation Safety Board Vice Chairman Bob Francis told CNN.
Lanter confirmed that the crash site was at the end of runway 26 but would not speculate from which runway the flight took off.
"Part of the investigation will establish what runway they were using," Lanter said. "Based on the information we received for the incident, we don't know what runway they were using."
Asked about the possibility that the wrong runway was used, Bornhorst told reporters, "I think that is a rumor and speculation that would be not good for any of us to go down right now."
NTSB investigators could take up to a year before formally ruling on the cause of the crash.
Gobb said the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder "have been retrieved and turned over."
County Coroner Ginn said much of the aircraft remained intact, despite a heavy fire that "traveled with the plane." The airport's fire department "got there very fast ... and because of that, we're able to keep a lot of the plane intact," he said.
"We are going to say a mass prayer before we begin the work of removing the bodies," County Coroner Ginn told The Associated Press, referring to the chaplains who serve the airport.
The coroner's office has set up a temporary morgue in Frankfort -- about 30 miles west of Lexington -- "in order to expedite the autopsies," Ginn said.
He said he is asking family members for dental records to help make identifications.
Comair purchased the CRJ-200 from Bombardier in January 2001 and said its maintenance was up-to-date.
That type of plane has a good track record, according to the NTSB Web site.
Bornhorst said the flight crew had been "on a legal rest period far beyond what is required," but the specifics of the crew's schedule will be part of the NTSB investigation.
The pilot, Capt. Jeffrey Clay, began work with Comair in 1999 and was promoted two years ago to captain, Bornhorst said.
Polehinke has worked for Comair since 2002, and Kelly Heyer, the male flight attendant, had been employed with the carrier since 2004, he said.
The plane went down before sunrise, and scared residents who initially thought it was bad weather.
"I really thought it was a big clap of thunder, so (I) didn't think much about it until I heard all the sirens," one man said.
Another man described what he saw from his back door.
"Over the hillside, I saw a flash of light and then an explosion, and then just a big plume of smoke come up," he said.
In Atlanta, most of the passengers aboard the crashed plane had planned to connect to other flights and did not have family waiting for them there, the Rev. Harold Boyce, a volunteer chaplain at Hartsfield-Jackson airport, told the AP.
One woman was there expecting her sister on the flight. The two had planned to fly together to catch an Alaskan cruise, he said.
"Naturally, she was very sad," Boyce said. "She was handling it. She was in tears."
NTSB investigators are heading to the crash site to begin an investigation.
*********
Also this is stated in MSNBC site as well - 49 dead in Ky. plane crash - U.S. Life - MSNBC.com
49 dead in plane crash in Kentucky; 1 survives
NBC News: Pilot of Comair flight 5191 took off on wrong runway
Timothy D. Easley / AP
Family members of victims of Comair flight 5191 console each other Sunday at a nearby hotel. The commuter plane crashed on takeoff at Lexington's Blue Grass Airport early Sunday morning.
BREAKING NEWS
NBC News and news services
Updated: 1 hour, 55 minutes ago
A commuter jet taking off for Atlanta crashed just past the runway and burst into flames, killing 49 people before dawn Sunday and leaving the lone survivor in critical condition.
Comair Flight 5191, a CRJ-200 regional jet, crashed at 6:07 a.m., said Kathleen Bergen, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration.
It wasn’t immediately clear what caused the plane to crash in a field just beyond Lexington’s Blue Grass Airport. But sources confirmed for NBC News that the pilot of the flight took off on the wrong runway.
Earlier, Lexington police spokesman Sean Lawson said investigators were looking into that possibility.
Sources also told NBC that only one air traffic controller was in the tower at the time of the accident.
The plane was largely intact, and authorities said rescuers were able to get one crew members out alive, but the county coroner described a devastating fire following the impact.
“They were taking off, so I’m sure they had a lot of fuel on board,” Fayette County Coroner Gary Ginn said. “Most of the injuries are going to be due to fire-related deaths.”
“We are going to say a mass prayer before we begin the work of removing the bodies,” he said.
The crash was the country’s worst domestic airplane accident in nearly six years. FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said the agency had no indication that terrorism was involved in any way.
Black boxes found
Both flight recorders, which should help investigators determine what went wrong were found, Ginn said.
The three-member flight crew was experienced and had been flying that airplane for some time, said Comair President Don Bornhorst. He said the plane’s maintenance was up to do. He would not speculate on what happened but said, “We are absolutely, totally committed to doing everything humanly possible to determine the cause of this accident.”
In Atlanta, most of the passengers aboard that plane had planned to connect to other flights and did not have family waiting for them there, said the Rev. Harold Boyce, a volunteer chaplain at Hartsfield-Jackson airport.
One woman was there expecting her sister on the flight. The two had planned to fly together to catch an Alaskan cruise, he said.
“Naturally, she was very sad,” Boyce said. “She was handling it. She was in tears.”
First officer said to survive crash
The only survivor, believed to be the flight’s first officer, according to airport director Michael Gobb, was in surgery at the University of Kentucky hospital on Sunday morning.
Mark Zerof / Reuters
Police and emergency vehicles are seen Sunday near the crash site of Comair flight 5191 in Lexington, Ky.
Bornhorst identified the three crew members as Capt. Jeffrey Clay, who was hired by Comair in 1999, first officer James M. Polehinke, who was hired in 2002, and flight attendant Kelly Heyer, hired in 2004.
The plane had undergone routine maintenance as recently as Saturday, Bornhorst said. Comair purchased that plane in January 2001, and all maintenance was normal as far as the information Comair had Sunday morning, he said.
The plane had 14,500 flight hours, “consistent with aircraft of that age,” Bornhorst said. Comair is a subsidiary of Delta Air Lines Inc. based in the Cincinnati suburb of Erlanger, Ky.
Investigators from the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board were investigating the crash.
If the plane was on the wrong runway, it could have been shorter than the pilot expected. The main runway at Lexington’s airport is 7,000 feet long, while a daytime-only, unlit general aviation runway is about 3,500 feet.
Chief Scott Lanter of the airport fire department said the crash was about a mile off the end of the shorter runway.
“We don’t know which runway they were using,” he said.
(Page 2)
Recent repaving
Blue Grass Airport had been closed to flights the previous weekend for runway repaving but reopened Aug. 20. It was closed for three hours after the crash.
Outside the terminal lobby at midmorning, Paul Richardson of Winchester had come to the airport because he believed a friend from Florida was on the plane.
“He took the earlier flight so he could get back to family,” Richardson said. He said airport officials were taking friends and family on buses to the nearby hotel.
Two sheriff’s deputies guarded the entrance of a nearby hotel where family members of passengers were being brought.
Rick Queen, who works for Turfway Realty in Lexington, said his father-in-law, Les Morris, was on the flight. He said Comair brought all the family members into a room at a Lexington hotel, told them the plane had crashed and family members died, then gave them an 800 phone number to call.
“This is one of the worst handled events in Lexington history,” Queen said as he left.
Kelly Heyer, the flight attendant, lived in the Cincinnati area and recently had been appointed as a base representative for the flight attendant union, said Tracey Riley, a union recording secretary and fellow Comair flight attendant.
“He was a standup individual,” Riley said. “He was very professional, loved the job.”
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said President Bush, who is spending a long weekend at his family’s summer home on the Maine coast, was being briefed on the crash.
“The president was deeply saddened by the news of the plane crash in Kentucky today,” she said. “His sympathies are with the many families of the victims of this tragedy.”
End to long fatality-free period
The crash marks the end of what has been called the “safest period in aviation history” in the United States. There has not been a major crash since Nov. 12, 2001, when American Airlines Flight 587 plunged into a residential neighborhood in Queens, N.Y., killing 265 people, including five on the ground.
On Jan. 8, 2003, an Air Midwest commuter plane crashed on takeoff at Charlotte/Douglas International Airport, killing all 21 aboard.
Last December, a seaplane operated by Chalk’s Ocean Airways crashed off Miami Beach when its right wing separated from the fuselage shortly after takeoff, killing the 18 passengers and two crew members. That plane, a Grumman G-73 Turbo Mallard, was built in 1947 and modified significantly in 1979.
The NTSB’s last record of a CRJ crash was on November 21, 2004, when a China Eastern-Yunnan Airlines Bombardier crashed shortly after takeoff. The 6 crew members and 47 passengers on the CRJ-200 were killed, and there were two fatalities on the ground.
CNN.com - 49 killed, one survivor, in Kentucky plane crash - Aug 27, 2006
49 killed, one survivor, in Kentucky plane crash
POSTED: 2:41 p.m. EDT, August 27, 2006
(CNN) -- Forty-nine of the 50 people aboard Delta Flight 5191 were killed when the aircraft crashed Sunday morning shortly after takeoff from Blue Grass Airport in Lexington, Kentucky, according to Fayette County Coroner Gary Ginn.
Ginn said he believes most people died from fire-related causes "rather than smoke inhalation."
Flight 5191 -- operated by Delta Air Lines' commuter carrier, Comair -- was en route to Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, where it was scheduled to land at 7:18 a.m. ET.
First responders extricated the crew's first officer -- the crash's lone survivor -- according to Blue Grass Airport's Chief of Public Safety Scott Lanter.
They "observed movement at the front of the aircraft, and then extricated the first officer from the nose of the airplane," Lanter said.
Comair President Don Bornhorst identified the first officer as James Polehinke.
Polehinke was in critical condition at University of Kentucky Chandler Medical Center in Lexington, airline and hospital officials said.
There were 47 passengers and three crew members aboard the flight. One of the passengers was off duty, sitting in the plane's jump seat, Blue Grass Airport Director Michael Gobb said.
Flight 5191 was cleared for take-off at 6:05 a.m. ET, which was the last communication between the pilot and air-traffic controllers at the airport, Federal Aviation Administration officials said.
The plane crashed about a half-mile from the end of the runway, said Bornhorst, Comair's president.
Two sources told CNN that radar identifying the plane's location shortly before it crashed indicates that it took off from the wrong runway -- one that was 3,500 feet shorter than the other.
The Bombardier Canadian Regional Jet (CRJ)-200 was cleared to take off from runway 22, which is more than 7,000 feet long, the sources said.
Instead, it took off from runway 26, which is 3,500 feet long, the sources said.
That length is "pretty short for that type of aircraft," former National Transportation Safety Board Vice Chairman Bob Francis told CNN.
Lanter confirmed that the crash site was at the end of runway 26 but would not speculate from which runway the flight took off.
"Part of the investigation will establish what runway they were using," Lanter said. "Based on the information we received for the incident, we don't know what runway they were using."
Asked about the possibility that the wrong runway was used, Bornhorst told reporters, "I think that is a rumor and speculation that would be not good for any of us to go down right now."
NTSB investigators could take up to a year before formally ruling on the cause of the crash.
Gobb said the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder "have been retrieved and turned over."
County Coroner Ginn said much of the aircraft remained intact, despite a heavy fire that "traveled with the plane." The airport's fire department "got there very fast ... and because of that, we're able to keep a lot of the plane intact," he said.
"We are going to say a mass prayer before we begin the work of removing the bodies," County Coroner Ginn told The Associated Press, referring to the chaplains who serve the airport.
The coroner's office has set up a temporary morgue in Frankfort -- about 30 miles west of Lexington -- "in order to expedite the autopsies," Ginn said.
He said he is asking family members for dental records to help make identifications.
Comair purchased the CRJ-200 from Bombardier in January 2001 and said its maintenance was up-to-date.
That type of plane has a good track record, according to the NTSB Web site.
Bornhorst said the flight crew had been "on a legal rest period far beyond what is required," but the specifics of the crew's schedule will be part of the NTSB investigation.
The pilot, Capt. Jeffrey Clay, began work with Comair in 1999 and was promoted two years ago to captain, Bornhorst said.
Polehinke has worked for Comair since 2002, and Kelly Heyer, the male flight attendant, had been employed with the carrier since 2004, he said.
The plane went down before sunrise, and scared residents who initially thought it was bad weather.
"I really thought it was a big clap of thunder, so (I) didn't think much about it until I heard all the sirens," one man said.
Another man described what he saw from his back door.
"Over the hillside, I saw a flash of light and then an explosion, and then just a big plume of smoke come up," he said.
In Atlanta, most of the passengers aboard the crashed plane had planned to connect to other flights and did not have family waiting for them there, the Rev. Harold Boyce, a volunteer chaplain at Hartsfield-Jackson airport, told the AP.
One woman was there expecting her sister on the flight. The two had planned to fly together to catch an Alaskan cruise, he said.
"Naturally, she was very sad," Boyce said. "She was handling it. She was in tears."
NTSB investigators are heading to the crash site to begin an investigation.
*********
Also this is stated in MSNBC site as well - 49 dead in Ky. plane crash - U.S. Life - MSNBC.com
49 dead in plane crash in Kentucky; 1 survives
NBC News: Pilot of Comair flight 5191 took off on wrong runway
Timothy D. Easley / AP
Family members of victims of Comair flight 5191 console each other Sunday at a nearby hotel. The commuter plane crashed on takeoff at Lexington's Blue Grass Airport early Sunday morning.
BREAKING NEWS
NBC News and news services
Updated: 1 hour, 55 minutes ago
A commuter jet taking off for Atlanta crashed just past the runway and burst into flames, killing 49 people before dawn Sunday and leaving the lone survivor in critical condition.
Comair Flight 5191, a CRJ-200 regional jet, crashed at 6:07 a.m., said Kathleen Bergen, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration.
It wasn’t immediately clear what caused the plane to crash in a field just beyond Lexington’s Blue Grass Airport. But sources confirmed for NBC News that the pilot of the flight took off on the wrong runway.
Earlier, Lexington police spokesman Sean Lawson said investigators were looking into that possibility.
Sources also told NBC that only one air traffic controller was in the tower at the time of the accident.
The plane was largely intact, and authorities said rescuers were able to get one crew members out alive, but the county coroner described a devastating fire following the impact.
“They were taking off, so I’m sure they had a lot of fuel on board,” Fayette County Coroner Gary Ginn said. “Most of the injuries are going to be due to fire-related deaths.”
“We are going to say a mass prayer before we begin the work of removing the bodies,” he said.
The crash was the country’s worst domestic airplane accident in nearly six years. FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said the agency had no indication that terrorism was involved in any way.
Black boxes found
Both flight recorders, which should help investigators determine what went wrong were found, Ginn said.
The three-member flight crew was experienced and had been flying that airplane for some time, said Comair President Don Bornhorst. He said the plane’s maintenance was up to do. He would not speculate on what happened but said, “We are absolutely, totally committed to doing everything humanly possible to determine the cause of this accident.”
In Atlanta, most of the passengers aboard that plane had planned to connect to other flights and did not have family waiting for them there, said the Rev. Harold Boyce, a volunteer chaplain at Hartsfield-Jackson airport.
One woman was there expecting her sister on the flight. The two had planned to fly together to catch an Alaskan cruise, he said.
“Naturally, she was very sad,” Boyce said. “She was handling it. She was in tears.”
First officer said to survive crash
The only survivor, believed to be the flight’s first officer, according to airport director Michael Gobb, was in surgery at the University of Kentucky hospital on Sunday morning.
Mark Zerof / Reuters
Police and emergency vehicles are seen Sunday near the crash site of Comair flight 5191 in Lexington, Ky.
Bornhorst identified the three crew members as Capt. Jeffrey Clay, who was hired by Comair in 1999, first officer James M. Polehinke, who was hired in 2002, and flight attendant Kelly Heyer, hired in 2004.
The plane had undergone routine maintenance as recently as Saturday, Bornhorst said. Comair purchased that plane in January 2001, and all maintenance was normal as far as the information Comair had Sunday morning, he said.
The plane had 14,500 flight hours, “consistent with aircraft of that age,” Bornhorst said. Comair is a subsidiary of Delta Air Lines Inc. based in the Cincinnati suburb of Erlanger, Ky.
Investigators from the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board were investigating the crash.
If the plane was on the wrong runway, it could have been shorter than the pilot expected. The main runway at Lexington’s airport is 7,000 feet long, while a daytime-only, unlit general aviation runway is about 3,500 feet.
Chief Scott Lanter of the airport fire department said the crash was about a mile off the end of the shorter runway.
“We don’t know which runway they were using,” he said.
(Page 2)
Recent repaving
Blue Grass Airport had been closed to flights the previous weekend for runway repaving but reopened Aug. 20. It was closed for three hours after the crash.
Outside the terminal lobby at midmorning, Paul Richardson of Winchester had come to the airport because he believed a friend from Florida was on the plane.
“He took the earlier flight so he could get back to family,” Richardson said. He said airport officials were taking friends and family on buses to the nearby hotel.
Two sheriff’s deputies guarded the entrance of a nearby hotel where family members of passengers were being brought.
Rick Queen, who works for Turfway Realty in Lexington, said his father-in-law, Les Morris, was on the flight. He said Comair brought all the family members into a room at a Lexington hotel, told them the plane had crashed and family members died, then gave them an 800 phone number to call.
“This is one of the worst handled events in Lexington history,” Queen said as he left.
Kelly Heyer, the flight attendant, lived in the Cincinnati area and recently had been appointed as a base representative for the flight attendant union, said Tracey Riley, a union recording secretary and fellow Comair flight attendant.
“He was a standup individual,” Riley said. “He was very professional, loved the job.”
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said President Bush, who is spending a long weekend at his family’s summer home on the Maine coast, was being briefed on the crash.
“The president was deeply saddened by the news of the plane crash in Kentucky today,” she said. “His sympathies are with the many families of the victims of this tragedy.”
End to long fatality-free period
The crash marks the end of what has been called the “safest period in aviation history” in the United States. There has not been a major crash since Nov. 12, 2001, when American Airlines Flight 587 plunged into a residential neighborhood in Queens, N.Y., killing 265 people, including five on the ground.
On Jan. 8, 2003, an Air Midwest commuter plane crashed on takeoff at Charlotte/Douglas International Airport, killing all 21 aboard.
Last December, a seaplane operated by Chalk’s Ocean Airways crashed off Miami Beach when its right wing separated from the fuselage shortly after takeoff, killing the 18 passengers and two crew members. That plane, a Grumman G-73 Turbo Mallard, was built in 1947 and modified significantly in 1979.
The NTSB’s last record of a CRJ crash was on November 21, 2004, when a China Eastern-Yunnan Airlines Bombardier crashed shortly after takeoff. The 6 crew members and 47 passengers on the CRJ-200 were killed, and there were two fatalities on the ground.
May God bless those who perished in this terrible tragedy.. I will pray for those who lost the loved ones.. 
