August 27th, 2006

dave-oh my god!

sometimes when you're having a bad week, something puts it all in perspective




he past five years has marked an unprecedented era of safety in the U.S. aviation industry, thanks in no small part, I'm sure, to the events which transpired on 9/11/2001. In fact, there have been no major airplane crashes since November, 2001 in the U.S. That ended today when a ComAir commuter jet carrying 43 passengers and 3 crew crashed shortly after take-off from Bluegrass Airport in Lexington, KY. It's all over the national media right now, however being a small city where not much happens on a regular basis, they're still scrambling their own correspondents to the area. The local television stations have pre-empted their regular programming and are feeding a lot of their information up to the networks and cable news outlets. One of the crew, is believed to have survived the crash and is in critical condition at the University of Kentucky Medical Center, but the rest of the flight's passengers have been killed.

The news are making wild speculation about whether the plane may or may not have used the wrong runway based on anecdotal evidence on the crash site in relationship to the layout of the runways. I personally find that very, very hard to believe. That means there would've been a complete breakdown in communication between the pilot, the tower, and the ground crew. Also, the runway in question would've not even been lit, as it's only a daytime use runway.

The last restaurant job I held before entering the trucking industry was at the airport. I was the General Manager of the Food and Beverage services in the airport and worked closely with the airport administration and the airline management, particularly Delta/ComAir. Part of those duties was the provision of "continental breakfast" boxes for the ComAir flights every day. As janietrain pointed-out in her entry, Lexington, and central Kentucky in general, is a relatively close-knit community and there's a chance everyone will be touched by this in some way or another, whether knowing someone who was on the flight or someone who did.

This is just awful.

Now I've got to figure out how I'm going to get to the south-side of Lexington from Frankfort this afternoon to see my kids. I'm definitely not taking Versailles Rd.