Posted on 09/01/2006 11:35:58 AM PDT by Zuben Elgenubi
Well...Delta IS in bankruptcy. Might come in handy.
Who is this guy? Fred Smith of FedEx? The WORD is INSTRUMENTS you moron.
Fred does that as a joke, not official lawsuitese.
Three vultures. You should show them with briefcases.
There is enough blame to go around.
Oh there were some very wealthy folks on that plane, this things going to drag on for years in the courts.
Booby?
yeah yeah, I caught it myself. See post 14.
...darn thick fingers.
Gosh guess they got over their grief long enuf to seek out a lawyer!!! Ya would think they could wait til the flowers on the gravesite withered! Makes me sick.
Aviation disaster --a pilot's view
A pilot/writer posted this at another writing site.
He gave permission to repost this here because it is both relevant & important.
I live in Lexington and have thirty years of airline experience flying in and out of LEX. I was also the station liaison for Lexington for ten years; here is what I think happened:
The two runways in question share the same common run-up area. The extended taxiway to the correct runway, runway 22 was closed due to construction. It has always been difficult to tell between the two runways when you are taxiing out. The natural thing to do is to take the wrong one. It is just there and you are always tempted to take it. When I flew out of LEX we always checked each other at least three times to make sure we were taking the correct runway. We checked the chart, we checked to make sure the correct runway number was at the end and we always double checked the FMS generated moving map.
Most FMS systems will have a warning called "runway dissimilarity" pop up in magenta when your position at takeoff doesn't match the runway you programmed into the computer. This would not happen at LEX since you are virtually in the same spot when you take either runway.
It was also raining at the time of takeoff and dark. The control tower opens at 6am (because we are, after all, all about saving money) and only has one controller on duty at that time. He or she has to: run ground control, clearance delivery, approach control and departure control. The one controller also has to program the ATIS and make the coffee. He or she probably cleared Comair to take off and then put their head back down to do a chore or work another airplane.
Taking the runway, the Comair guy would put the power up and wouldn't realize they were on the wrong runway until they were about 70% down the pike. Too late to safely abort so he probably decided to try and continue the takeoff.
This is when the eye witnesses heard a series of explosions and though the plane blew up in the air. Didn't happen -- what they heard and saw were compressor stalls of probably both engines. The pilot no doubt pushed the throttles all the way up and that demand to the engines combined with the steep pitch attitude cut off enough air to the intakes to cause the compressor stalls -- which, by the way, made them even more doomed; LESS POWER.
They stalled or simply hit one of the large hills to the west of the airport and came to a stop. Everybody on board was probably injured but alive. Then, a second or two later the post-crash fire began. With the darkness and the fact that most of them had broken legs, pelvises and backs they literally burned alive. Not smoke inhalation. They really actually burned to death.
In my role as station liaison I wrote most of the post crash safety procedure for Delta at that field. Too bad there weren't enough survivors to use them.
BTW, Comair and the press will tell you what a great plane the RJ is. This is a total lie. The Canadair RJ was designed to be an executive barge, not an airliner. They were designed to fly about ten times a month, not ten times a day. They have a long history of mechanical design shortfalls. I've flown on it and have piloted it. It is a steaming, underpowered piece of shit. It never had enough power to get out of its own way and this situation is exactly what everybody who flies it was afraid of.
The senior member of the crew had about five and a half years of total jet experience; the copilot less. They had minimum training (to save money -- enjoy that discount ticket!); and were flying a minimally equipped pos on very short rest. The layover gets in about 10pm the night before. They report for pick-up at 4:30am.
I'm sorry if I sound bitter but this is exactly the direction the entire airline industry is going. Expect to see bigger more colorful crashes in the future.
If you doubt me as a so-called expert; I have 20,000 of heavy jet flying time and am type rated in the 727, 757, 767, 777, DC-8, DC-9 and L-1011. _______________________________________________
I told my family that should I ever die in an accident and they feel they just need to sue (I'd prefer they didn't unless there is some obvious negligence and some good would come of the suit) that I would hope that they at least wait until I am buried. I also told them that they need to be the ones to approach the lawyer, not the other way around.
I have had a number of opportunities to fly in a Canadair jet. I have declined each time.
It's about the loved one, not the money....uh nevermind.
Hard to blame the families.
Sounds like a huge airline f#ck up.
I guess you need a bankruptcy lawyer to sue an airline company nowdays.
Excellent observation.
Easy to judge from afar I guess. Actually, it's not usually the case, as to have standing in court you'll need to show damages. You can sue if you're out-of-state cousin is killed, but your case won't go beyond an initial hearing and no lawyer will take it.
I'm no fan of ambulance chasers, but in this case people have been wrongfully killed through abject negligence. Their families are deprived of their future earnings and support, they most go through probate to settle estates, none of which is enjoyable or was expected. It's wrong - no other word really works - for you to sit in judgement of people dealing with the unexpected deaths of thousands.
As for the issue of "no great injustice", perhaps it would reach that level if someone close to you had been killed.
The FMS anecdote here is wrong. The runway ends are sufficiently far apart to have activated and caused an alarm on the type of FMS referred to. However, few are installed because no one ever expected pilots to do something this dumb.
Then I wouldn't even pursue anything, that's the point I was making.
Deprived of future earnings? I've never understood this rationale for the "market of death lawsuits" these days. Unless the litigants are children, literally, how can an average person make the claim that their 20 something daughter, sister, or cousin would have "earned them money in the future"? Who is routinely, in an average household, giving their siblings, parents or other relatives a significant amount of cash that, should they be deprived of such income, it would be a significant amount of money over a lifetime?
Of course if I give my parents $5 a week, for the next 30 years, it will be a "significant" amount of money in a lump sum. But that's not really the point, is it, if one thinks about it? Or is it? Because to think of a relative that one supposedly loves as a "lump sum bottom line income earner" is rather cold, and surely doesn't help the case of the average "relative dies, get rich quick lawsuit", at least morally speaking.
Yeah it's pretty easy to judge, when I honestly cannot see how this kind of lawsuit, on average, could ever be anything but a gold digging opportunity. Are there exceptions? Sure, if the litigants are children, or the people killed were wealthy, supporting their own parents or other relatives. But how often does that happen in this country? How often is that situation represented in these types of lawsuits? I'm quite certain, these types of cases are the exception, not the rule.
Interesting post. And scary. Airlines have always had difficulty with the bottom line, these days it's worse, with people thinking about terrorism.
However valid the excuses, Comair employees made a mistake that took the lives of 49 peoples. I think that for once the lawsuits are justified.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.