"CNN just said that when the two pilots got to the airport that morning, they got in the WRONG plane and turned on the power!"
That can't be good.
Man, it sounds like those guys were sleep-walking, just going through the motions, not focused on the job at hand. Their schedule, rest time, etc. will probably get a real hard going over.
Isn't Delta in bankruptcy? Are they pushing their crews too hard? From the article CedarDave just posted, the pilots apparently had plenty of time before the flight, but that doesn't tell us about how hard they were worked in the previous 30 days or if they had ever flown together. The FO had been called in to replace another, so they may have been unfamiliar with each other's tendencies.
So many questions - such a tragedy. I hope NTSB uncovers all the necessary facts to put together 'lessons learned' so this scenario doesn't happen again.
No, but it's not as uncommon a mistake as you might think. I don't know for sure, but I assume that LEX, like many airports, doesn't use jetways for regional jets. So the pilots get to the airport when it's dark, walk out onto the ramp, and have two identical airplanes parked next to each other. There aren't any visual differences, and the gate agents and ramp workers may have been too busy doing other things to point out the right aircraft. Certainly they could have checked; the important part is to figure out why they believed they were in the right airplane - did they just assume, or was there was a paperwork problem, or maybe they did ask a gate agent who pointed to the wrong airplane. Fatigue could have come into play there as well. I think many things will be learned once all the links in this accident chain are discovered and analyzed.
Isn't Delta in bankruptcy? Are they pushing their crews too hard?
To be precise, this was a Comair flight. While Comair is owned by Delta, and their flights are operated as "Delta Connection", they are a separate airline with their own operating certificate, and their crews have separate unions with different contracts and different crew rules, over which Delta has no say.