LEXINGTON, Ky. (AP) -- A Comair flight carrying 50 people crashed a mile from Lexington’s airport Sunday morning shortly after takeoff, the Federal Aviation Administration said. At least one person survived.

Comair Flight 5191, a CRJ-200 regional jet with 47 passengers and three crew members, crashed at 6:07 a.m. EDT after taking off for Atlanta, said Kathleen Bergen, an FAA spokeswoman.

There was no immediate word on what caused the crash in a field about a half-mile from Blue Grass Airport. Light rain was falling at the time. The plane was largely intact afterward, but there was a fire following the impact, police said.

The University of Kentucky hospital is treating one survivor, who is in critical condition, spokesman Jay Blanton said. No other survivors have been brought to the hospital, he said.

Lexington police spokesman Sean Lawson said investigators were looking into whether the plane took off from the wrong runway. “That is a possibility,” Lawson said.

Speaking at a Comair news conference, airline President Don Bornhorst said, “We cannot speculate on the cause of this accident.”

Bornhorst, who became choked several times during the news conference, identified the crew as Capt. Jeffrey Clay, who was hired by Comair in November 1999, first officer James M. Polehinke, who was hired in Marh 2002, and flight attendant Kelly Heyer, hired in July 2004.

He said looking into whether terrorism was involved is “certainly part of the investigation.”

Fayette County Coroner Gary Ginn said the passengers and crew appeared to still be on the plane and the deaths were caused either by the impact or the “hot fire” on board.

“We are going to say a mass prayer before we begin the work of removing the bodies,” Ginn said, referring to the chaplains who serve the airport.

A temporary morgue is being set up at the scene and the bodies will be brought to the state medical examiner’s office in Frankfort, Ginn said. He said both flight recorders have been found.

Rose Wilson, who lives near the airport, said she was awakened by the crash. “I thought it was thunder,” she said.

Investigators from the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board were en route to the scene, FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said.

The airport closed for three hours after the crash, but reopened by 9 a.m. to passengers who could show a ticket to security. Security officers were turning away others as they arrived.

The airport had been closed to flights the previous weekend for runway repaving. It reopened on the evening of Aug. 20.

Airport chaplains at Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport were meeting with family members waiting for their loved ones at the airport, said the Rev. Harold Boyce, an airport chaplain.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said the president, who is spending a long weekend at his family’s summer home on the Maine coast, was being briefed on the crash by aides. The news of it broke while he and his wife, Laura, where at church with the elder Bushes. Perino had no other information about the crash.

Comair, based in Erlanger, Ky., has been battling with the regional airline’s 970 flight attendants over concessions the company is seeking as part of its restructuring.

Comair has said it needs $7.9 million a year in concessions from the flight attendants as part of a package of cuts its flight attendants, pilots and mechanics. A federal bankruptcy judge last month gave Comair permission to throw out the flight attendants’ contract.

The negotiating teams have been working to schedule additional talks.

Comair has 6,400 employees and operates 850 flights daily to 108 cities. It and Delta had been hoping to emerge from Chapter 11 by the summer of 2007.

Both Comair and Atlanta-based Delta have been operating under bankruptcy protection since September 2005.

The Bombardier Canadair CRJ-100 is a twin-engine aircraft that can carry up to 50 passengers, according to Delta’s Web site.

The crash marks the end of what has been called the “safest period in aviation history” in the United States. There has not been a major crash since Nov. 12, 2001, when American Airlines Flight 587 plunged into a residential neighborhood in Queens, N.Y., killing 265 people, including five on the ground.

On Jan. 8, 2003, an Air Midwest commuter plane crashed on takeoff at Charlotte/Douglas International Airport, killing all 21 aboard.

Last December, a seaplane operated by Chalk’s Ocean Airways crashed off Miami Beach when its right wing separated from the fuselage shortly after takeoff, killing the 18 passengers and two crew members. That plane, a Grumman G-73 Turbo Mallard, was built in 1947 and modified significantly in 1979.

The NTSB’s last record of a CRJ crash was on November 21, 2004, when a China Eastern-Yunnan Airlines Bombardier crashed shortly after takeoff. The 6 crew members and 47 passengers on the CRJ-200 were killed, and there were two fatalities on the ground.

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Associated Press Writers Bruce Schreiner in Louisville, Leslie Miller in Washington and Harry R. Weber in Atlanta contributed to this report.

(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)