Depositions Cite Pilot Errors Before Crash: Airport Lawyers Quote Comair Instructors

By Brandon Ortiz, The Lexington Herald-Leader, Ky.

Jul. 19–Three Comair pilot instructors testified in depositions that the crew of Comair Flight 5191 committed numerous procedural violations before taking off from the wrong runway and crashing near Blue Grass Airport, according to court documents filed by the airport.

The Flight 5191 crew did not follow briefing, taxi and “sterile-cockpit” rules, and the pilot and co-pilot failed to closely follow published diagrams of the airport, the instructors said. One said the pilots would have failed a flight test that day.

Another instructor said that Lexington is a “staple city” for Comair pilots, and that the airport did not have a confusing runway layout.

The airport is accusing Comair of playing “fast and loose” with the facts in the airline’s contention that the airport shares blame for the Aug. 27 crash, which killed 49 of 50 people on board.

In a court brief filed Tuesday, airport lawyers quoted excerpts of deposition testimony from Comair instructors in an effort to dispute the airline’s allegations. The instructors were deposed by the airport.

The increasingly heated back-and-forth over the crash’s cause has occurred in otherwise dry legal filings over whether the airport can claim sovereign immunity and avoid legal liability for the crash.

Attorney Tom Halbleib said the airport is responding “to unsupportive allegations that Comair made.”

But “I don’t mean to say, ‘They started it,’” he said. “That sounds a little too third-grade.”

A Comair spokeswoman said the deposition excerpts released by the airport don’t tell the whole story.

“The depositions of the (instructors) were extensive, and their individual comments should not be taken out of context,” said spokeswoman Kate Marx, who declined further comment.

The flap is the latest round of finger-pointing that is sure to intensify next week when the National Transportation Safety Board meets in Washington, D.C., to issue a probable cause of the accident.

Comair has filed a third-party claim against the airport in a lawsuit filed by relatives of crash victim Rebecca Adams. Dozens of other lawsuits against Comair have been filed by crash victims in state and federal courts.

Halbleib says the Comair instructors’ testimony is consistent with evidence released by the NTSB showing that the pilots violated company and Federal Aviation Administration rules by talking about their families, work and other subjects while preparing for takeoff.

Comair Capt. Thomas Scharold testified in his deposition that the Flight 5191 pilots violated briefing, taxi and “sterile cockpit” rules, which say that pilots should maintain a distraction-free cockpit. Scharold is a line check pilot, essentially a veteran pilot who trains other pilots.

Had Scharold been instructing Flight 5191′s pilots — Jeff Clay and first officer James Polehinke — he would not have let them take off, he said.

All Comair pilots are required to receive training from line check pilots each year and must pass flight tests called check rides, Marx said.

Polehinke was the flight’s only survivor. His lawyer declined to comment.

The pilots were supposed to depart from Runway 22, the airport’s 7,000-foot primary runway. But they accidentally took off from Runway 26, which is half as long and too short for a regional jet of that size.

The two runways intersect, and pilots must cross Runway 26 to get to the main runway.

Comair has noted that published airport diagrams that were in use the morning of the crash had mislabeled a taxiway.

An airport attorney asked Scharold about the intersecting runway layout: ” … Regardless of how they’re designated, by looking at that airport diagram, it’s clear as crystal that in order to get to Runway 22, you have to cross first Runway 26?”

Correct, Scharold replied, according to the deposition excerpt.

Another instructor, Capt. Timothy David Patrick, said that Lexington is a “staple city” that Comair pilots were familiar with. He said the airport’s layout, which features intersecting runways, is not considered confusing.

Last week, in arguing against the airport’s claim of sovereign immunity, Comair wrote that pilots were “confronted with inaccurate and inadequate airport charts, maps, signs, barriers, markings and lighting in the pre-dawn hours” before the flight.

The airline said airport officials mismanaged a massive runway construction project and failed to file a Notice to Airmen warning pilots that taxiway signs did not correspond with published airport diagrams.

——

Documents: Read the airport’s memo supporting its motion to dismiss and the airline’s response to the motion to dismiss.

Reach Brandon Ortiz at (859) 231-1443, 1-800-950-6397, Ext. 1443.

—–

To see more of the Lexington Herald-Leader, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.kentucky.com.

Copyright (c) 2007, The Lexington Herald-Leader, Ky.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

Johannesburg:COM,