WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Federal Aviation Administration on Tuesday acknowledged that only one controller was in the tower, in violation of FAA policy, when a Comair jet crashed Sunday while trying to take off from the wrong runway in Lexington, Kentucky.
Forty-nine of 50 people aboard were killed.
The acknowledgment came after CNN obtained a November 2005 FAA memorandum spelling out staffing levels at the airport. The memo says two controllers are needed to perform two jobs -- monitoring air traffic on radar and performing other tower functions, such as communicating with taxiing aircraft.
In instances when two controllers are not available, the memo says, the radar monitoring function should be handed off to the FAA's Indianapolis Center. (Watch what pilots may have seen -- 2:09)
The FAA confirmed to CNN on Tuesday that the lone controller was performing both functions Sunday at Blue Grass Airport in violation of the FAA policy.
The FAA should have scheduled a second controller for the overnight shift or should have shifted radar responsibilities to Indianapolis Center, FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/08/29/plane.crash/index.html
in the video entitled "Watch what pilots may have seen", they use 'computer software' (i.e. MSFS) to demonstrate what happened