Bonanza N7472N crashed in December 2008 after its engine failed in flight. The engine failed because the crankshaft broke. The 25 year-old pilot was killed in the forced landing attempt. The pilot’s widow sued Continental Motors, alleging that the crankshaft, which was only 58 hours old, was defective. This week, the jury sided with Continental.
The plaintiff brought
The Minnesota Supreme Court has now spoken, bringing to an end the litigation against Cirrus for its alleged failure to train pilot Gary Prokop.
Prokop flew his new Cirrus SR22 into conditions of poor visibility and crashed, killing himself and his passenger. The passenger’s family sued Cirrus, as will as Prokop’s estate, claiming that Cirrus
More than 30 Cessna 208 and 208B Caravans have crashed when their wings iced up in flight. Victims’ families have filed many product defect lawsuits against Cessna, claiming that Cessna concealed from the pilots defects in the aircraft’s deicing system. Silvey v. Cessna is the first case to reach trial. At least the first that I
Power lines can be virtually invisible from the air. The trick to avoiding them is, paradoxically, not to try to find them. Instead, the pilot should look for the towers from which they are strung. Once the pilot has the towers in sight, he should choose one and fly directly over it, rather tha
n between them.
The air in an airliner’s cabin has been compressed by the aircraft’s engines. Most of the time, the air is safe to breathe. But if a leaky seal in the engine allows the air to first mix with heated engine oil, the cabin air can be contaminated with toxic fumes.
When a cabin fills with toxic chemicals from an
A pilot crashed his new Cirrus, killing himself and his passenger. According to the families, Cirrus didn’t train the pilot on the use of the plane’s autopilot when he showed up at the factory to pick up his new aircraft, and that contributed to the crash. The details are here.
The jury agreed with the
EMS helicopter crash cases aren’t easy. A lawyer representing a victim’s family ought to have experience in helicopter crash cases. If he doesn’t, he should bring into the case a lawyer who does. What he should not do, obviously, is make up for lack of experience by bribing the judge.
It’s shocking to think that a lawyer
The lawyer representing Lidle’s widow told the Associated Press that today’s verdict for Cirrus was a foregone conclusion once the judge decided to keep out certain key evidence.
. . .the jury result was predictable because the judge refused to allow jurors to hear that the company revised its manufacturing process after the crash to
Cirrus says Cory Lidle crashed because he was inexperienced, not because his controls locked up. But a surprise witness testified that Lidle had flown the East River Corridor successfully four times in the two months before the crash. According to a NY Daily News account, the witness related that Lidle talked with her about his
We knew from the surviving passenger that the Cirrus’ engine quit before crashing at Morton, Washington. But did the engine quit because of a mechanical problem? Or did it quit, perhaps, due to fuel starvation?
I discussed those questions here, days after the accident happened. Now, a year later, the NTSB says the engine failure was the