The sun hadn’t come up yet in Lexington as Comair Flight 5191 started heading down the runway at Kentucky’s Blue Grass Airport. The pilots chatted about various things, a clear violation of the sterile cockpit rule, that was required to be followed during this important time.

Had they been paying closer attention, they would have noticed that the runway they lined up on and were about to take off from was unlit and was too short. It was the wrong runway. They were supposed to take Runway 22, a longer runway which provided enough distance for the Bombardier Canadair Regional Jet CRJ-100ER to safely get off the ground. Instead, by the time the pilots had realized their error, it was too late. The plane crashed through a fence as it tried to take off at the end of Runway 26. All 47 passengers and two crew members, the 35-year-old captain and the 27-year-old flight attendant, were killed. The first officer survived.

Family members attended a tearful memorial service for all of the victims just days after the crash, but some thought they could do more. Three adult children lost their mother. They wanted to know what happened. They wanted this to never happen again and to try to make flying safer for other travelers. They called their lawyer in Lexington. That firm knew of the national reputation Clifford Law Offices has in aviation law. They called Robert Clifford.

Immediately, Bob Clifford flew to Lexington and met the lawyers and the family. Faced with Kentucky law and the possibility that the airport (which was under construction) would be altered, our firm filed a lawsuit within days of the crash as well as a motion seeking a restraining order and/or temporary injunction in state court. The firm was asking that the taxiways and runways be kept in their current condition so that the firm’s experts and attorneys for the family could be allowed to examine the surfaces as well as their configuration. Something obviously had gone terribly wrong and lawyers at Clifford Law Offices promised the grieving family members that they would get to the bottom of it.

Robert Clifford and Michael Krzak would also make numerous trips to Lexington in the ensuing months on behalf of the five families who had hired the firm for answers. It would later be discovered that a number of things had gone wrong that morning. Careful analysis of the cockpit voice recorder indicated that the captain acknowledged that he would be taking off from Runway 22 that was 7,500 feet long but taxied instead onto an unlit Runway 26 that was just 3,500 feet long. He then turned the controls over to the first officer for takeoff. The lone air traffic controller in the tower did not maintain visual contact with the aircraft and turned away to perform administrative duties so he did not see the tragic mistake that was being made. It would later be revealed that the tower was understaffed, violating an internal policy.

Calculations would demonstrate that with the load the plane was carrying, a runway with a minimum of 3,744 feet was necessary for a safe takeoff. Even though the pilots remarked about the dark runway, they did nothing to check if what they were doing was right. They were wrong.

Before they could achieve lift off, the plane struck a berm, became airborne momentarily, clipped the airport fencing with its landing gear, collided with trees, and then crashed into a hill, separating the fuselage and cockpit from the tail. The plane loaded with jet fuel burst into flames.

Most of the 47 passengers who died were from Lexington. Many of them knew each other in this small, friendly town in the middle of the country that would never be the same.