Originally Posted by
peekay4
True, but there have been two other instances at LEX where a jet incorrectly lined up on 26 instead of 22, and in both cases ATC detected and alerted the flight crews.
In fact one of the incidents happened shortly after the Comair crash in similar conditions. A small Lear 45 was taking off at night and turned to the wrong runway. An alert controller saw it and immediately cancelled the Lear's takeoff clearance.
As reported by the controller:
Well the one
shortly after the crash does not surprise me one bit all the controllers will be on edge about crews not able to check runway heading and be using binoculars to check every aircraft departure. Although I am surprised the crew was not more aware.
I cannot comment on the similarity or not of the previous incident. The fact still remains that visually assessing from a distant control tower where an aircraft is lined up at night when the angle subtended between the correct and incorrect positions is very small is not guaranteed.