Copilot Polehinke and Widow of Jeffrey Clay Sue … Everybody
James Polehinke, copilot of the Comair jet that crashed on takeoff from Lexington last year, and Amy Clay, widow of captain Jeffrey Clay, have filed lawsuits against the FAA, the maker of the airport charts, the Lexington airport, and a company involved with the lighting at the airport, AVCON. Yet another article describes the defendants as the FAA, the airport, the chart maker, and construction company Tetra Tech rather than AVCON.
The NTSB report assigned the largest portion of blame to the pilots, saying they failed to notice “clues” that they were on the wrong runway.
The FAA, by its own regs, should have had two controllers but had only one, who had his back to the strip and did not see Comair 5191 lining up on runway 26 rather than 22 as had been directed. I don’t see how the NTSB let FAA off as lightly as it did.
According to a news release from the airport, NTSB cleared them entirely:
A spokeswoman for the airport, Amy Caudill, said in a news release that the NTSB’s investigation found that neither the airport board nor its employees were responsible for the crash, and FAA inspections found that the airport’s signs and markings met FAA standards.
The chart maker declined to comment. I assume charts are issued to pilots by the airline, but the airline can only issue the charts it receives from the maker. The question would seem to be, were these charts provided according to the conventional update schedule and the construction/renovation to the runways took place after they were issued, with no regs in place to insure issuance of new charts, even outside the ordinary bureaucratic schedule? Or were they late even according to the usual schedule?
And now we come to the crux of the matter: Runway lights.
The lawsuit says AVCON Inc., of Orlando, Fla., was responsible for runway lighting at the airport that was “so erratic, haphazard and/or improper that many commercial pilots, including the pilots of Flight 5191, could not rely on or expect the lighting for the runways and taxiways to comply with applicable laws, rules, regulations procedures and orders.”
Perhaps that is true. But the damning information is that the runway they were directed to was edge-lit, if not center-lit, and the runway they lined up on was not lit at all. Polehinke and Clay may win the lawsuit because the simple fact that the main runway was not center-lit goes to the idea that the lighting system as a whole was faulty. But though it may gain them a technical point in court, the bottom line is that professional pilots ought to know better than to take off from an unlit runway in the dark.
The controller, Christopher Damron, an FAA employee, failed to give taxiing and takeoff instructions that detailed the unusual conditions at the airport and failed to check the location of the plane before allowing it to take off, the suits claim.
While a suit against the FAA should win on the grounds that there should have been two controllers, the single controller in the tower cannot be faulted if he specified “runway 22” and the pilots lined up on runway 26. It is unfortunate, to say the least, that the two runways were within 40 degrees of one another (the runway numbers refer to the compass direction of takeoff or landing, so runway 22 is at 220 degrees, or roughly southwest, and 26 is at 260 degrees, or almost due west).
The NTSB cited the pilots’ failure to note “clues” that they were on the wrong runway. While the notion that pilots should have to rely on “clues” rather than correct information and clear indicators to get them to the proper runway is frightening and spurious, the fact remains that they should notice, whether they have to or not. And the inescapable fact is that a darkened runway is surely one of the biggest clues of all.
Update: Commenter Buck, below, is my father as well as a retired Comair pilot, and he helped me slap the AP’s wrist last year when they were so busy publishing sensationalism that saddled F.O. Polehinke with more than his fair share of blame. He has a couple of points I need to highlight:
Most airports the size of Lexington’s do not have runway centerline lighting. Centerline lights are required only for runways which have an ILS approach with lower than standard visibility minimums.
That will be an important point in the suit against AVCON and could moot my theory that they may win that one. If the lights on the main runway were standard, it will be that much more obvious that they ignored the lit runway in favor of the dark one.
You seem to say that the NTSB completely cleared the FAA of blame in the accident, but the news release you quoted cites only the airport board and its employees as free from responsibility for the accident.
I haven’t read the NTSB report either, but the news accounts agree they assigned primary responsibility to the pilots, whereas at the time of the accident I would have said there was plenty of blame to go on both the pilots and the FAA–thus my comment that NTSB seemed to let the FAA off lightly, but no, they were not held blameless.
I doubt that most pilots, especially airline pilots who might work as many as seven or eight flights a day, would even look at his airport chart when operating at an airport with which he is familiar.
This does not surprise me, but it does cast the suit against chart maker Jeppeson in a new and distasteful light. Since I doubt there’s much chance of anybody proving anything about the charts in court other than whether or not they were outdated, I’m guessing Jeppeson may take a hit. It’s been reported ever since the accident that the charts were indeed incorrect. So we may see a company who was both responsible (for not having a correct chart) and blameless (in that the pilots may not even have looked at the chart at all) taking a hit to save face for the pilots.
What a mess.
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You’re mostly right, Anwyn. I’m a retired Comair pilot. Just a couple of comments.
Most airports the size of Lexington’s do not have runway centerline lighting. Centerline lights are required only for runways which have an ILS approach with lower than standard visibility minimums.
You seem to say that the NTSB completely cleared the FAA of blame in the accident, but the news release you quoted cites only the airport board and its employees as free from responsibility for the accident. There is some confusion here. I would be surprised if the NTSB cleared the airport completely if it is the case that two tower controllers were required to be on duty when only one was. I haven’t read the NTSB report however.
Anyone can see that all this suing is just another grab for big bucks. It rubs me the wrong way especially to see one of the pilots and the widow of the other casting blame on everyone in sight when anyone, not just a pilot, can easily understand that it was error on the part of both pilots which was the PRIMARY (though not the only) cause of the crash. As you say, it was a fundamental and gross error for any pilot, professional or otherwise, to attempt to take off on an unlighted runway in the dark. Also,I personally cannot imagine a pilot lining up on a runway without checking his heading indicator to confirm it matches the runway’s directional orientation. That is why runways are named by their compass heading–to make that crosscheck easy for pilots. In this case both pilots’ heading indicators would have shown 260 when they should have read 220 (within a couple of degrees of course) for runway 22.
Virtually every airline, and every pilot, uses navigation, approach and airport charts from the Jeppeson company, which of course must do a thorough and timely job of updating information on changing conditions, such as a runway closure. I don’t know what the standard is for timeliness but it obviously must be quite stringent. I’m sure it is the case that an airport authority would notify Jeppeson of planned changes on the airport so that the information can be published simultaneously with the changes. I would like to know whether in this case the Jeppeson chart for the Lexington airport current at the time of the accident was completely up to date. But as I’ve said, that doesn’t make much difference as to the ultimate blame for the crash. I doubt that most pilots, especially airline pilots who might work as many as seven or eight flights a day, would even look at his airport chart when operating at an airport with which he is familiar.
Comment by Buck — September 7, 2007 @ 8:08 pm
Dad, thanks a lot for your full comments. I’ve added some to the post.
Comment by Anwyn — September 7, 2007 @ 9:20 pm
Q: What happens when the Air Traffic Controller screws up?
A: The pilot dies.
Q: What happens when the pilot screws up?
A: The pilot dies.
As the persons assuming all the risks, we pilots owe it to ourselves to make sure no one is screwing up. I rate this lawsuit right up there with the Carnahan family’s suits after Mel and his sons made their tragic decision to fly their small plane through a thunderstorm and didn’t make it.
Comment by Chris — September 8, 2007 @ 8:33 pm
I’m not understanding what you’re saying, Chris, although I remember the Carnahan crash–are you saying these lawsuits are a good thing to make the companies involved think about whether they’re screwing up?
Comment by Anwyn — September 8, 2007 @ 8:51 pm
I didn’t mean to be vague. I’m not a big fan of frivolous lawsuits. The Carnahan crash lawsuits from what I remember were all based on a radio call about something like vacuum pump failure (which led the family to sue the aircraft companies), when the problem was actually decision-making.
I rate this set of lawsuits in the same vein. I’m all for holding people accountable, and I realize sometimes that ends up being the job of the courts when an organization like a corporation or government agency circles the wagons. I don’t necessarily trust the FAA to always do the right thing, and I’ve also seen a couple cases where contractors like the airfield painters/resurfacers/etc taking shortcuts that caused even more taxpayer dollars to be spent fixing the newly-defective runway. Suing Jeppesen seems over the top. I certainly don’t know everything about this case, but I seriously doubt Jeppesen has even a single percent of culpability.
When I was 20, Cessna and Piper weren’t even making new GA aircraft. It wasn’t because the products weren’t safe or not updated enough, it was because of a bunch of ridiculous lawsuits with juries who awarded plaintiffs large sums because a lawyer managed to convince them that the products weren’t safe. The products aren’t safe when they’re not used outside their performance envelopes, and thunderstorms, for instance, are outside nearly every aircrafts’ performance envelope; as is trying to take off when overloaded (Aaliyah).
We learned in Safety School that post-WWII over 60% (very roughly) of the time pilot error causes crashes, and that trend has only increased since then.
There’s risk involved every time you fly. The only way to be certain no accidents happen is to not fly. Good luck to those who don’t, and enjoy the road, where you’re statistically more likely to have an accident anyway! (Private pilot certification cost me about $2.4K in 1990, learning to drive cost me about $100 in 1986. . . you do the math as to why you’re more likely to have an accident on the road).
Comment by Chris — September 9, 2007 @ 7:07 am
Thanks for the elaboration, Chris. Yeah, a vacuum pump and also maybe a directional gyro, from what I read about the Carnahan case last night.
I simply misunderstood you when you said pilots owe it to themselves to make sure nobody screws up. Looks like we agree that they do, but that lawsuits after X number have already been killed is an unfortunate time and method to choose to do so.
Comment by Anwyn — September 9, 2007 @ 8:44 am