THE sole survivor of a plane crash in Kentucky was seriously ill in hospital last night after being dragged from the flaming body of the aircraft, which crashed minutes after take-off, killing 49 people on board.

The 50-seater Comair commuter jet had just taken off from Blue Grass airport in Lexington when it crashed into a field less than a mile from the runway and burst into flames.

Investigators confirmed last night that the aircraft had taken off from the wrong runway, which was half the length of the strip it should have used.

Debbie Hersman, the chief National Transportation Safety Board investigator, said that there were marks apparently made by the plane at the end of the runway. It was not meant to be used by commercial flights.

Emergency workers who arrived on the scene were able to pull one crew member alive from the burning fuselage but the rescue efforts were quickly called off when it became clear that all the other passengers and crew on board had died.

The survivor was named yesterday as James Polehinke, one of the pilots, who has worked for the carrier since 2002. Last night he was in a critical condition in the University of Kentucky Hospital. The coroner on the scene said that the plane was still largely intact and suggested that the dead had been killed either by the impact or had burnt to death in the ensuing inferno.

“They were taking off so I’m sure they had a lot of fuel on board,” Gary Ginn, the Fayette County coroner, said. “Most of the deaths are going to be due to fire-related injuries.”

Among those who died were a newlywed couple starting their honeymoon. Jon Hooker, a former minor-league baseball player, had married Scarlett Parlsey the night before in a ceremony with 300 guests. Keith Madison, the coach of Mr Hooker’s baseball team and a guest at the wedding, said: “It’s so tragic because he was so happy last night. It’s just an incredible turn of events.”

The crash marks the end of what has been called the “safest period in aviation history” in the United States, with no high casualty crashes in almost five years.

Investigations are focusing on whether controllers at Blue Grass airport directed the pilot to the wrong runway. The Bombardier Canadair Regional Jet 200 was cleared to take off from a runway that is more than 7,000ft (2,130m) long but used an unlit, general aviation runway that is only 3,500ft long, too short for the jet to have made a safe take-off.

Flight 5191 was cleared for take-off at 6.05am, when air traffic controllers had their last communication with the pilot. The aircraft crashed 14 minutes later, a mile west of the runway.

The aircraft, operated by Delta’s commuter subsidiary, Comair, had been on its way to Hartsfield-Jackson airport in Atlanta. It had 46 passengers, three crew members and an off-duty crew member on board.

Some relatives fiercely criticised Comair’s handling of the disaster, telling of how they were herded on to buses to a hotel.

Rick Queen, an estate agent from Lexington, said that his father-in-law, Les Morris, had been on the flight. He said that Comair had brought all the family members into a hotel room, told them the plane had crashed and their relatives had been killed, and then gave them a freephone number to call. “This is one of the worst handled events in Lexington history,” Mr Queen said as he left the hotel.

The crash was the worst in the US since November 2001 when American Airlines flight 587 plunged into a residential neighbourhood in Queen’s, New York, killing 265 people.

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