If You Don’t Snooze, You Lose
About an hour before sunrise on August 27, 2006, Comair Flight 5191 was approaching 120 miles per hour on its takeoff from the Blue Grass Airport in Lexington, Kentucky, when co-pilot James Polehinke noticed something strange about the runway.
“That is weird,” he said in a conversation captured by the flight recorder. “No lights.”
“Yeah,” said Capt. Jeffrey Clay.
Sixteen seconds later, their 50-seat commuter jet ran out of runway. Polehinke just managed to get airborne but not enough. The plane hit an earthen berm, clipped a fence and a clump of trees, and went down in a ball of flames.
The pilots had gone … » More …