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Families react to NTSB rulings

06:45 PM EDT on Thursday, July 26, 2007

More coverage:
VIDEO: Families react
VIDEO: NTSB hearing
VIDEO: Process delayed
VIDEO: Memorial planned
Flight 5191 slideshow

LEXINGTON, Ky. -- It's not easy sitting in a hotel ballroom, watching a federal agency talk about the plane crash that killed your loved one. But that's what about 30 people did today in Lexington.

“Sadness, and at the same time just wishing that a lot of these little things just hadn’t happened and these tragedies hadn’t happened,” said Matthew Snoddy.

Snoddy's father Tim died on board Comair Flight 5191 last August. Snoddy and the other families who watched the NTSB deliberations via satellite heard nothing new -- they knew the pilots couldn't have been paying attention when they took off on the wrong runway, unlit and too short, but it wasn't the only cause of the crash.

“My children miss their father,” said Anita Threet, whose husband died in the crash.

“Corporate pressure,” said Barry McKee. “And corporate pressure makes people do things that they normally don’t do and it puts them in a position where they make bad decisions and it causes things like this to happen.”

McKee’s wife died in the crash. He and other victims's family members say the NTSB has done a good job with the investigation. It hasn't helped their grief but maybe the changes recommended by the NTSB will help other families avoid loss.

Web story produced by Jay Ditzer.

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LEXINGTON, Ky. -- The National Transportation Safety Board is meeting in Washington DC to talk about the cause of the crash of Comair Flight 5191 in Lexington that killed 49 people.

At the meeting, NTSB staff members said they’d put in 13,000 man-hours on the investigation of the crash. Staff members told the board there were no problems with the plane, visibility, crew or emergency response to the crash.

“There was nothing here that actually surprised me. You know I feel like we’ve had all the facts up to this point,” said Anita Threet, whose husband was killed in the crash. “The tone of the chairman, he was clearly angry and they were clearly just have no grasp on how these poor decisions were made and for me, you know, that brought out the anger in me and a lot of the family members.”

Threet and about 30 other crash victims’s family members are watching the proceedings at the Lexington Hyatt.

The NTSB is expected to issue its ruling later today.

Web story produced by Jay Ditzer.

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From The Associated Press:

The National Transportation Safety Board is deliberating the cause of the crash of Comair Flight 5191, in which 49 of 50 people on board died. The jet tried to take-off from a too-short runway.

Although NTSB’s five board members will vote on a cause later in the day. A staff report by NTSB this morning proposed the airport changes. NTSB hasn’t officially signed off on them.

However, the NTSB staff concluded that the fact the crew of the Comair flight didn’t have updated maps and notices alerting them to construction that changed the taxiway route weeks earlier were not factors in the navigation error.

Board member Deborah Hersman, who was the lead investigator on scene, suggested there were numerous causes—nearly all of them human. She added, “That’s the frustration of this accident—no single cause, no single solution and no ah ha moment.”

(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press.  All Rights Reserved.)

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