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"  Forty-nine people were killed when Comair Flight 5191, a 50-seat commuter jet, crashed just outside Blue Grass Airport in Lexington, Ky. (Photo: AP/Wide World Photos) When Comair Flight 5191 took off from Blue Grass Airport in Lexington, Ky., it was flying low--low enough to clip a boundary fence and immediately crash. The reason was hard to accept: The pilot picked the wrong runway, one that was too short for commercial flights. Whether he was misdirected by the control tower or simply didn&amp;#039;t notice is unclear. Couldn&amp;#039;t a simple cockpit navigation system, similar to GPS systems that alert drivers when they&amp;#039;re heading the wrong way, have averted the biggest U.S. air disaster in five years?  align=&amp;quot;left&amp;quot; style=&amp;quot;padding-right:3px;&amp;quot;&amp;amp;gt; The Airport Moving Map program displays a real-time map on a cockpit screen, pinpointing the plane&amp;#039;s current location at the airport. NASA&amp;#039;s air-safety database lists two incidents since 1993 in which pilots were confused by the runway configuration at Blue Grass. Neither incident ended in a crash, but the need for a better airport navigation system should have been clear. The tools used by most pilots to find their way around airports are surprisingly antiquated--a magnetic compass and a paper diagram. Planes equipped with digital maps of airports and terrain, on screens called electronic flight bags (EFBs), are extremely rare. Comair 5191--a CRJ-100 commuter jet--did not have an EFB. EFBs have been around for years, and Colorado-based map data company Jeppesen provides updated airport maps every few weeks. Jeppesen also makes Airport Moving Map, an EFB application that shows a plane&amp;#039;s location in relation to the taxiways and terminal buildings. But for now, only a limited number of Boeing 777s are outfitted with EFBs, let alone the new software. So why aren&amp;#039;t EFBs more common? Many airlines, already struggling with bankruptcy, balk at the cost. &amp;quot;Look at the number of airlines operating airplanes that are 30 to 35 years old,&amp;quot; says Eric Anderson, a spokesman for Jeppesen. &amp;quot;Is it a good business decision to retrofit airplanes when they&amp;#039;re going to be retired soon?&amp;quot; The FAA rarely mandates equipment that airlines can&amp;#039;t afford, and only a few companies, such as UPS, are voluntarily updating their existing fleets. And while Boeing 787s and Airbus 380s will incorporate EFBs, experts expect a 10- to 15-year wait before airlines replace their fleets and finally make the technology standard issue. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/flight/a945/4199546/>