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That would depend; if he is as cooperative as the surviving F/O on the American Airlines McDonnell Douglas MD-82 into Little Rock, Arkansas then he will be more interested in saving his own skin. Lets hope not.

Matt

I can speak from experience that when I do something a million times it becomes second nature.  When something becomes second nature I cease to conscously think about it.  Often I can perform this act indefinately without fail, but in some rare cases it is at this point that I make obvious mistakes.  So I can see how a crew flying out of an airport they've departed from 100 times before could make a mistake and take off from the wrong runway.

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Yes.

First and foremost, hwo familiar a pilot is with an airport should be irrelevant.  However, Chris' point about doing the same thing a million times is exactly what I said before-doesn't matter how proffessional the crew, it leaves the door open to even just a little bit of carelessness-especially in these overworked, underpaid regional crews.

Aye, I don't think my CFI's lasted four months and he's getting out for a "normal" job. (he's lucky, he's highly qualified in fields other than aviation)

I also heard today that the taxiway had been reconfigured recently.
It's starting to sound like a chain of unfortunate events, which is how most tragedies occur.

LEXINGTON, Ky. - The taxi route for commercial jets using Blue Grass Airport’s main runway 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 cross over the shorter general aviation runway where the commuter jet tried to take off early Sunday, Blue Grass Airport Executive Director Michael Gobb told The Associated Press.

The runway repaving was completed late on the previous Sunday, Gobb said. It wasn’t clear if the Comair pilots aboard Flight 5191 had been there since the change. Comair operates that regular 6 a.m. weekend flight to Atlanta from Lexington, but another commuter airline takes over that commute during the week.

“It’s slightly different than it used to be,” said Charlie Monette, president of Aero-Tech flight school, which is based at the airport. “Could there have been some confusion associated with that? That’s certainly a possibility.”

The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the crash and could not immediately be reached for comment.

Conversations between the plane’s cockpit and the person staffing the control tower before dawn Sunday morning mentioned only the airport’s main commercial strip, Runway 22, NTSB member Debbie Hersman said earlier Monday.

Somehow, the commuter jet ended up on the airport’s other runway instead, Runway 26 — 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.

Clipping trees
The pilots tried to lift off, but 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.

Although Blue Grass Airport’s Runway 22 is 7,000 feet, the plane departed from the 3,500-foot general aviation Runway 26. The twin-engine CRJ-100 would have needed 5,000 feet to fully get off the ground, aviation experts said.

There also were clues for the pilot: Signs marking the right way. Less lighting. And severely cracked concrete — not the type of surface typically found on runways for commercial routes.

Left now are only scuff marks on the wrong runway and the wreckage of a plane scattered into pieces across a field about a mile away from the airport.

I wonder how many of us have taken a CRJ-200 to KLEX and tried taking off on 26 ?