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who is to blame for this? the air traffic controller, who had turned his back to attend to his "administrative duties" as the plane veered down the wrong runway, or the pilot, who missed the obvious clue of the runway having no lights?

This is one of those "human error" things. i guess most of the blames gonna fall on the controler, after all, telling the pilots where to land is his job after all

yes, i agree. but what about the pilot? from what i understand, the runway not having lights is pretty much day one training.

i guess its "land and maybe crash or crash" when your that low in. But yes, he should have noticed a distinct lack of light on the ground

they were taking off.

rebuttal: 47 were killed, not 50.

hang on, so the pilots shagged the takeoff? surely even without lights he could have taken off and fixed flight path in the air.

he veered down the wrong runway, one that was half the distance he needed to acquire the appropriate airspeed to take off.

Ok, the blame is on him then, Air Traffic Control cant take responcibility if a pilot takes a wrong turn, he wouldn't have realised his mistake (even if he should have noticed a lack of light) until he was out of runway

but the air traffic controller's job is self explainatory. he controls the traffic. its his job to make sure the plane takes off down the right runway.

True, i know this is a bit of a cop out but the guys prolly gave the pilot the all clear for the correct runway, started giving info to the next plane then watched the fireball as the pilots gone "all clear, off we go" and gone down the wrong runway

i dunno. someone fukked up big time.

well they can blame the pilot all they want at this point, he'd be dead.

actually, the co pilot survived.