AVIATION/ JURY AWARD FROM COMAIR FL5191 CRASH

A jury has awarded $7 million to survivors of a passenger who was onboard COMAIR 5191. This is the only case to come to trial, and this award is just the 1st phase of the suit. A separate jury will determine if the Airline was negligent in the accident. That trial, which will be sometime next year, would make the family eligible for punitive damages. Most of the other lawsuits filed were settled out of court. On August 26, 2006, Comair Flight 5191 was on Domestic CRJ100 Service from Lexington, Kentucky, to Atlanta, Georgia, on behalf of DELTA AIRLINES, with 47 passengers and 3 crew members onboard. The CRJ attempted to depart a runway that was too short at Blue Grass Airport in Lexington, and ran off the end of the runway. All 47 passengers, along with 2 of the 3 crew members onboard, were killed in the crash. The Co-Pilot was the sole survivor. The NTSB determined the probable cause(s) of the accident were the flight crewmembers's failure to use available cues and aids to identify the aircraft's location on the Airport surface during taxi and their failure to cross-check and verify that the airplane was on the correct runway before takeoff. Contributing to the accident were the flight crew's nonpertinent conversation during taxi, which resulted in a loss of positional awareness, and the FAA's failure to require that all runway crossings be authorized only by specific air traffic control clearances.