AirBill said:
You know, it's just so great to hear from people like yourself, and I find myself humbled to be in the presence of someone who never screwed up.
So you're suggesting that the captain INTENTIONALLY tried to take off from a 3,500-foot runway, just for kicks? A part-121-trained, seven years of experience, two and a half years in the left seat, just-for-the-hell-of-it let's try it? At night, with rain, full seats and full fuel? Please tell me this isn't what you mean.
If it is, go **** yourself.
Come on Bill, it dosent take a rocket scientist to realize that the aircraft probably took off on the wrong runway.
Sure, none of us were there so we don't know how things unfolded. However, are you telling us you need to wait until the NTSB decides what really happened before you allow yourself to have an opinion? Don't just be a robot, do a little thinking for yourself.
It's scary how many times in this thread I've heard people commenting with statements such as "
havent you ever made a mistake in your aviation carreer" or "
I am sure you have never missed a switch/checklist item/frequency" or "
have you never almost landed on the wrong runway before" etc, etc. Are comments such as those suggesting that mistakes are ok just because we feel empathy?
When any aircraft crashes after taking off on a runway that is too short is not simply "
making a little mistake" Bill. Tuning the wrong frequency is what I would call a little mistake.
Physically steering the aircraft in flight, for me, is the easy part of what we do; taxiing around some of these airports we fly in and out of is the most difficult part of what we do. I can certainly see how easy it is for something like this to happen, but this should not be blown off as just a mistake.
My interpretation of what IFLYABEECH was trying to say about this being a "student pilot" type of mistake was that this is one of the first lessons that are tought to all of us, beginning at the student pilot level, and it's pretty basic. Before you learn how to fly, you need to know how to taxi to the correct runway and be able to figure out if you're too heavy to use a certain runway or not. Pretty simple stuff.