So sad,on the local news it said 2 of the passengers were a couple that had just gotten married last night an were on the way to their honeymoon.

By JEFFREY McMURRAY, Associated Press Writer
49 minutes ago



LEXINGTON, Ky. - A commuter jet carrying 50 people crashed in a field and caught fire shortly after taking off in light rain Sunday morning. Authorities said at least one person survived.
Comair Flight 5191, a CRJ-200 regional jet with 47 passengers and three crew members, crashed at 6:07 a.m. after taking off for Atlanta, said Kathleen Bergen, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration.

There was no immediate word on what caused the crash in a field about a mile from Blue Grass Airport. The plane was largely intact afterward, but there was a fire following the impact, police said.

"We have no indication at all that this has anything to do with terrorism," said Laura Brown, an FAA spokeswoman.

The crash appeared to be the worst domestic air accident in nearly six years.

Lexington police spokesman Sean Lawson said investigators were looking into whether the plane took off from the wrong runway.

"We are absolutely, totally committed to doing everything humanly possible to determine the cause of this accident," Comair President Don Bornhorst said at a news conference.

He said he could not speculate on the cause or confirm who the survivor was.

"The crew had been operating the same airplane for quite some time," Bornhorst said.

He identified the crew as Capt. Jeffrey Clay, who was hired by Comair in November 1999, first officer James M. Polehinke, who was hired in Marh 2002, and flight attendant Kelly Heyer, hired in July 2004.

Bornhorst said the maintenance of the plane was up to date, with routine maintenance as recently as Saturday. Comair purchased that plane in January 2001, and all maintainance was normal as far as the information Comair has now, he said.

The plane had 14,500 flight hours, "consistent with aircraft of that age," Bornhorst said.

The University of Kentucky hospital was treating one survivor, who was in critical condition, spokesman Jay Blanton said. No other survivors have been brought to the hospital, he said.

Fayette County Coroner Gary Ginn said the passengers and crew appeared to still be on the plane and the deaths were caused either by the impact or the "hot fire" on board.

"We are going to say a mass prayer before we begin the work of removing the bodies," Ginn said, referring to the chaplains who serve the airport.

A temporary morgue was being set up at the scene and the bodies will be brought to the state medical examiner's office in Frankfort, Ginn said.

He said both flight recorders have been found.

Rose Wilson, who lives near the airport, said she was awakened by the crash.

"I thought it was thunder," she said.

Investigators from the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board were en route to the scene, said Brown of the FAA.

The airport closed for three hours after the crash, but reopened by 9 a.m.

Chaplains at Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport were meeting with family members waiting for their loved ones at the airport, said the Rev. Harold Boyce, an airport chaplain.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said President Bush, who is spending a long weekend at his family's summer home on the Maine coast, was being briefed on the crash.

"The president was deeply saddened by the news of the plane crash in Kentucky today," she said. "His sympathies are with the many families of the victims of this tragedy."

Comair is a subsidiary of Delta Air Lines based in the Cincinnati suburb of Erlanger, Ky.

The Bombardier Canadair CRJ-100 is a twin-engine aircraft that can carry up to 50 passengers, according to Delta's Web site.

The crash marks the end of what has been called the "safest period in aviation history" in the United States. There has not been a major crash since Nov. 12, 2001, when American Airlines Flight 587 plunged into a residential neighborhood in Queens, N.Y., killing 265 people, including five on the ground.

On Jan. 8, 2003, an Air Midwest commuter plane crashed on takeoff at Charlotte/Douglas International Airport, killing all 21 aboard.

Last December, a seaplane operated by Chalk's Ocean Airways crashed off Miami Beach when its right wing separated from the fuselage shortly after takeoff, killing the 18 passengers and two crew members. That plane, a Grumman G-73 Turbo Mallard, was built in 1947 and modified significantly in 1979.

The NTSB's last record of a CRJ crash was on November 21, 2004, when a China Eastern-Yunnan Airlines Bombardier crashed shortly after takeoff. The 6 crew members and 47 passengers on the CRJ-200 were killed, and there were two fatalities on the ground.

___

Associated Press Writer Leslie Miller in Washington contributed to this report.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060827/ap_on_re_us/kentucky_crash

That is so sad, but also such a miracle, cause one person survived the crash.
My heart stopped beating when I heard this, it was on Dutch tv too. (Cause my best friend was on a plane on her way to the US today)

Yeah it is. Last I heard the man who survived was critical he was one of the pilots. They saw movement and police & fire fighters got him out they are true hero's. Glad that your friend is okay Dutch.

Here's an update
By JEFFREY McMURRAY, Associated Press Writer
14 minutes ago



LEXINGTON, Ky. - A commuter jet mistakenly trying to take off on a runway that was too short crashed into a field Sunday and burst into flames, killing 49 people and leaving the lone survivor — a co-pilot — in critical condition, federal investigators said.

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Preliminary flight data from Comair Flight 5191's black box recorders and the damage at the scene indicate the plane, a CRJ-100 regional jet, took off from the shortest runway at Lexington's Blue Grass Airport, National Transportation Safety Board member Debbie Hersman said.

The 3,500-foot-long strip, unlit and barely half the length of the airport's main runway, is not intended for commercial flights. The twin-engine CRJ-100 would have needed 5,000 feet to fully get off the ground, aviation experts said.

It wasn't immediately clear how the plane ended up on the shorter runway in the predawn darkness. There was a light rain Sunday, and the strip veers off at a V from the main runway, which had just been repaved last week.

"We will be looking into performance data, we will be looking at the weight of the aircraft, we will be looking at speeds, we will pull all that information off," Hersman said.

The Atlanta-bound plane plowed through a perimeter fence and crashed in a field less than mile from the end of that runway at about 6:07 a.m. Aerial images of the crash site in the rolling hills of Kentucky's horse country showed trees damaged at the end of the short runway and the nose of the plane almost parallel to the small strip.

When rescuers reached it, the plane was largely intact but in flames. A police officer burned his arms dragging the only survivor from the cracked cockpit.

The flames kept rescuers from reaching anyone else aboard — a newlywed couple starting their honeymoon, a Florida man who had caught an early flight home to be with his children and a University of Kentucky official among them.

"They were taking off, so I'm sure they had a lot of fuel on board," Fayette County Coroner Gary Ginn said. "Most of the injuries are going to be due to fire-related deaths."

FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said the agency had no indication that terrorism was involved in any way in what was the country's worst domestic plane crash in five years.

It's rare for a plane to get on the wrong runway, but "sometimes with the intersecting runways, pilots go down the wrong one," said Saint Louis University aerospace professor emeritus Paul Czysz.

The worst such crash came on Oct. 31, 2000, when a Los Angeles-bound Singapore Airlines jumbo jet mistakenly went down a runway at Taiwan's Chiang Kai-Shek International Airport that had been closed for repairs because of a recent typhoon. The resulting collision with construction equipment killed 83 people on board.

Comair President Don Bornhorst said maintenance for the plane that crashed Sunday was up to date and its three-member flight crew was experienced and had been flying that airplane for some time.

"We are absolutely, totally committed to doing everything humanly possible to determine the cause of this accident," Bornhorst said. "One of the most damaging things that can happen to an investigation of this magnitude is for speculation or for us to guess at what may be happening."

Most of the passengers aboard the flight had planned to connect to other flights in Atlanta and did not have family waiting for them, said the Rev. Harold Boyce, a volunteer chaplain at Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson airport.

One woman was there expecting her sister. The two had planned to fly together to catch an Alaskan cruise, Boyce said.

"Naturally, she was very sad," Boyce said. "She was handling it. She was in tears."

The only survivor of the crash was identified as first officer James M. Polehinke, who was in critical condition after surgery at the University of Kentucky hospital.

The other crew members were Capt. Jeffrey Clay, who was hired by Erlanger, Ky.-based Comair in 1999, and flight attendant Kelly Heyer, hired in 2004. Polehinke has been with Comair since 2002.

The plane had undergone routine maintenance as recently as Saturday and had 14,500 flight hours, "consistent with aircraft of that age," Bornhorst said.

Investigators from the FAA and NTSB were at the scene, and Bornhorst said the airline was working to contact relatives of the passengers.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said President Bush, who is spending a long weekend at his family's summer home on the Maine coast, was being briefed on the crash.

"The president was deeply saddened by the news of the plane crash in Kentucky today," she said. "His sympathies are with the many families of the victims of this tragedy."

Among those killed were a newlywed couple starting their honeymoon. Jon Hooker, a former minor-league baseball player, had just married Scarlett Parlsey the night before the crash in a fairy tale wedding ceremony complete with a horse-drawn carriage and 300 friends.

"It's so tragic because he was so happy last night," said Keith Madison, who coached Hooker's baseball team at the University of Kentucky and attended the wedding. "It's just an incredible turn of events. It's really painful."

The crash marks the end of what has been called the "safest period in aviation history" in the United States. There has not been a major crash since Nov. 12, 2001, when American Airlines Flight 587 plunged into a residential neighborhood in Queens, N.Y., killing 265 people, including five on the ground.

___

Associated Press Writer Leslie Miller in Washington and Harry Weber in Atlanta contributed to this report.

very very sad, it looks like it was human error, just a terrible accident.

Yeah it is..they just reported another plane down in Eastern KY..it was a 6 seater no word on anything yet.

That is so sad. My thoughts and prayers are with all the different families.

This is so sad.

One of the pilots and that Kelly guy lived right here by me so sad

They crashed in my state do you know how that makes me feel?? pretty **** bad!!