Airport director: Taxi route changed a week before airplane crash in Lexington, Ky.

LEXINGTON, Ky. — The taxi route for commercial jets at Blue Grass Airport was altered a week before Comair Flight 5191 took the wrong runway and crashed, killing all but one of the 50 people aboard, the airport's director said Monday.

Both the old and new taxiways to reach the main commercial runway cross over the shorter general aviation runway, where the commuter jet tried to take off early Sunday, Airport Executive Director Michael Gobb told The Associated Press.

While the main strip, Runway 22, is 7,000 feet long, the shorter one, Runway 26, is just 3,500 feet. Aviation experts say the CRJ-100 would have needed 5,000 feet to fully get off the ground.

The runway repaving was completed late on the previous Sunday, one week before the crash, Gobb said.

It wasn't clear if the Comair pilots aboard Flight 5191 had been to the airport since the changes. Comair operates that regular 6 a.m. Sunday flight to Atlanta from Lexington, but another commuter airline takes over the early morning commute during the week.

The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the crash and said it was reviewing runway and taxiway markings as part of its investigation.

Recorded conversations between Comair Flight 5191's cockpit crew and the single person staffing the control tower in the minutes before Sunday's crash showed no signs of trouble. The only runway mentioned was the main commercial strip, Runway 22, said NTSB member Debbie Hersman.

Somehow, the commuter jet ended up on Runway 26 instead — a cracked surface meant for small planes that was much too short for Comair's twin-engine jet.

What followed was the worst U.S. plane disaster since 2001.

"The take-off began, and the aircraft continued to accelerate until the recording stopped," Hersman said.

The plane clipped trees, then quickly crashed in a field and burst into flames, killing everyone aboard but a critically injured co-pilot who was pulled from the cracked cockpit.

Information retrieved from the cockpit voice recorder indicated that the preflight preparations had been "consistent with normal operations," Hersman said Monday.

There were no obvious problem with the airworthiness of the plane and the engines were in tact and appeared to have been in good working order, she said.