Cirrus N146CK crashed on August 4 at Deer Valley, Airzona.  The pilot was killed.  Just before the accident, the aircraft’s door popped open.  We know that because the pilot reported to air traffic control that his door was open and that he needed to return to the airport to close it.  Plus, surveillance cameras confirmed that the pilot’s door was indeed ajar. 

The plane’s door popped open? What’s with that? 

The Cirrus doors are poorly designed.  It’s that simple. They just don’t stay shut in flight.  

The plane flies okay after a door pops open.  But the distraction can be dangerous, and can lead to a loss of control, as demonstrated by this 2009 Cirrus crash.  Following the 2009 accident, John

Continue Reading Cirrus Crash at Deer Valley, Arizona: Door Opened (Yet Again. . .)

When the evidence needed to reconstruct an aviation accident is lost or destroyed in the crash, can the victim nonetheless hold whoever caused the accident accountable?

Yes, if the legal doctrine of "res ipsa loquitur" apples — Latin for "the thing speaks for itself."

Most courts recognize that air crashes do not normally occur unless someone, somewhere, was negligent.  It’s just a matter of who.  If circumstances point to one particular person above all others, then "the thing speaks for itself," and that person can be held accountabe even without any physical evidence to prove the case.

Let’s say an airplane’s engine fails and the plane crashes. The pilot survives but is badly injured. The key engine components are either battered beyond recognition, destroyed by the post-crash fire, or never located. Under the circumstances, it may be impossible to ever determine exactly why the engine failed.  There may be little chance of determining from the wreckage who was responsible for the accident.

Now assume that engine work had been performed on the plane just before the accident. Under the circumstances, one might suspect that the engine failed because the mechanic who performed the engine work did something wrong.  Of course, there are other possible explanations for the engine failure as well.  But if the injured pilot can prove that the mechanic’s work is the most likely explanation, a judge or jury may decide that the maintenance shop is responsible, even without any physical evidence to rely on.

To invoke the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur against the maintenance shop in this example, the injured pilot must prove that:

  1. The engine would not have failed unless someone was negligent;
  2. The maintenance facility had exclusive control of the engine during the key time period (that is, only the facility’s own mechanics had access to the inside of the engine when it was opened up); and
  3. The pilot did not cause or contribute to the engine failure (by, for example, running out of gas).

Even if there isn’t enough physical evidence to determine how or why the engine failed, if the pilot can prove all these three things, he may nonetheless be able to hold the shop responsible for his injuries.

An FBO is not supposed to rent an aircraft to a pilot who the FBO knows isn’t competent to complete the planned flight safely. If it does, and a passenger is hurt or killed by the pilot’s mistake, the victim or his family can hold the FBO responsible. That’s the law of "negligent Negligent entrustment of aircraftentrustment."

A pilot who doesn’t hold the proper license or rating to operate the aircraft he is seeking to rent is probably not competent to complete the planned flight safely.  But what if the pilot is properly licensed and meets all the FAA’s other requirements? If the FBO rents the aircraft to the pilot, can the FBO still be held responsible for what turns out to be the pilot’s mistakes?

Sometimes, the answer is yes.

The landmark case is White v. Inbound Aviation. A young pilot had just recently received his private pilot’s license. He was comfortable flying the FBO’s Piper Archer in which he had been "checked out" by one of the FBO’s instructors. The FBO felt the renter was a good pilot.  It felt, however, that the pilot should obtain some additional instruction in "mountain flying" before flying to an airport in the mountains nearby.  The FBO felt that without the instruction, the pilot might not be able to handle the special challenges presented by "high density altitude" airports. 

One day the pilot showed up to rent the Archer. He told the FBO that he wanted to fly two friends to Lake Tahoe airport, an airport in the mountains.  The pilot hadn’t obtained the mountain-flying instruction, but the FBO rented the aircraft to him anyway.

The pilot landed at Lake Tahoe airport without incident. But he wasn’t prepared for the effects of the altitude, heat, and weight of the aircraft on takeoff.  When he attempted to depart, he crashed, killing himself as well as his two passengers.

The family of one of the passengers sued the FBO, arguing it should never have rented the plane to the pilot for this particular trip. The jury agreed and held the FBO liable.Archer II by Markus

The FBO appealed.  It argued that the pilot held a license that legally entitled him to fly anywhere he wanted, including mountain airports like Lake Tahoe. That, the FBO argued, should have been the end of the matter. If the pilot was competent in the eyes of the FAA, he should have been deemed competent in the eyes of the court.

The court of appeal disagreed, and affirmed the jury’s verdict against the FBO.  Though the young pilot may have been a competent pilot generally, that wasn’t the issue.  The FBO knew that, notwithstanding his license, the pilot wasn’t competent for the particular flight he had planned.  As the court of appeal noted:

[The issue as plaintiffs framed it] was not whether [the pilot] was competent in general to pilot an aircraft but whether [he] was competent to ‘operate the aircraft that he operated on the day he operated it and in the manner in which he operated it under the conditions he experienced … on July 3rd with three people on board going to Lake Tahoe.’

The FBO knew that, even though he was properly licensed, the pilot was not competent to conduct the particular flight he had planned under the conditions that existed on the day of the accident.  The court of appeal ruled that, therefore, the jury properly held the FBO liable for the accident under the law of negligent entrustment.  

The American Association for Justice’s Annual Convention begins today at the Vancouver Convention Centre.  The program for aviation lawyers will be held on Monday, July 12.  The schedule: Vancouver

8:30 – 11:45, Room 215-216:

Speakers will be

Mike Danko – Aviation Litigation Forecast

Ricardo Martinez-Cid – International Commercial Airplane Crashes

Ladd Sanger – Aviation Deposition and Trial Skills

Heidi Snow – Clients and Grief – Insights

Vicki Norton – Three Things a Commercial Airline Pilot Would Change

1:30 – 2:30, Room 101 – 102:Teashouse

Aviation Law Section Meeting

5:30 – 7:30:

Aviation Law Section Reception (sponsored by The Danko Law Firm and Slack & Davis.) 

The Teahouse 

7501 Stanley Park Drive

All are welcome. 

When Cory Lidle’s widow sued Cirrus Design, it caused a bit of an uproar in the aviation community.  Her suit alleges that it was a defect in the aircraft’s flight controls that caused the Cirrus SR-20 to slam into a Manhattan hi-rise.  That claim led many to call the suit frivolous.  After all, the NTSB determined the accident was caused by pilot error, plain and simple. Right?

Cirrus asked the federal judge who is hearing the case to toss it out as being based on "junk science." Cirrus argued that under legal precedent known as Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, the judge must act as a "gatekeeper."  That means she must review the expert

Continue Reading Lidle v. Cirrus: Claim Not “Junk Science”

Many airports in the western United States are located at altitude.  In the thin air, a departing aircraft’s propeller and wings are less aerodynamically efficient.  And without a turbocharger, the aircraft’s engine won’t be able to produce full power.  All of that hurts the aircraft’s ability to climb. Unless the aircraft is handled properly, after lifting off the runway it may travel for a distance

Continue Reading Summer Means High Density Altitude Airplane Accidents

A passenger injured in an aircraft accident can’t sue the aircraft manufacturer if the part that caused the crash is older than 18 years. Any such suit would be barred by the General Aviation Revitalization Act, or GARA.

What if the accident was caused by a mistake in one of the aircraft’s manuals rather than a defect in the aircraft itself?  If the manual is older than 18 years, does GARA protect the manufacturer from liability for its error? 

It depends.  The manufacturer is off the hook if the manual is properly considered a "part" of the aircraft.  Some manuals are. Some aren’t.

A flight manual (sometimes called a "pilot’s operating handbook" or "flight handbook") is properly considered "part" of the aircraft, and so GARA protects the manufacturer. For example, in Caldwell v. Enstrom Helicopters, the pilot’s family blamed a helicopter crash on the flight manual’s failure to say that the last two gallons of fuel in the helicopter were unusable.  As a result, the pilot believed he had sufficient fuel but in fact did not.  He crashed just minutes from his destination.

The Caldwell court said that Twin Bonanza Flight Manualmanufacturers are required by regulation to provide a flight manual when it delivers the aircraft to the customer.  The manual must be carried in the aircraft at all times thereafter. Therefore, the manual was properly considered to be an aircraft "part."  Because the manual at issue was more than 18 years old, GARA applied to protect the manufacturer from liability for any errors. 

But the situation is different when the manual is a maintenance manual. A manufacturer can sell an aircraft without providing to the buyer a maintenance manual.  Thus maintenance manuals, unlike flight manuals, are not a "part " of the aircraft, and GARA doesn’t apply. At least according to Rogers v. Bell Helicopters Textron, a case decided earlier this month by a California appellate court. 

In Rogers, the pilot claimed the accident resulted from faulty instructions in a maintenance manual for balancing the helicopter’s tail rotor. The court ruled that, despite the fact that the manual was more than 18 years, GARA didn’t apply and so the pilot was entitled to sue.  

Unlike a flight manual that is unique to the aircraft, used by the pilot, and necessary to operate the aircraft, a maintenance manual applies to different aircraft models, is used by the mechanic, and only for troubleshooting and repairing the aircraft.

According to Rogers,, GARA won’t protect a manufacturer from liability for mistakes in its maintenance manuals, regardless of how old the manuals are. 

The plaintiff in Rogers was represented by Louis Franecke of San Rafael. 

I wrote here that mediations are often preferable to settlement conferences. The mediator is chosen by the parties, while the trial judge who presides over the settlement conference generally is not. Further, the mediator often has more time than the trial judge to devote to the settlement process.

This month’s Forum Magazine published an article by Kristine Meredith and Judge John Judge John F. Herlihy (ret.)Herlihy (recently retired from the bench and now a private judge) that touched on this very topic.  Kristine asked Judge Herlihy, who has 29 years experience on the bench, why the parties should even bother attending a pre-trial settlement conference if the case couldn’t be settled at a mediation.  According to Judge Herlihy, timing can be everything:

As the case gets closer to trial the [likely] outcome becomes clearer.  I often told lawyers that although the case didn’t resolve at mediation, as a trial judge, I had an advantage that the prior mediator did not have.  If the case didn’t resolve when it was in my department for trial, then the next step was to call for the jury panel.  That immediacy had a direct effect on the parties’ and attorneys’ willingness to try one last time to settle.

"Reality Check: A Trial Judge’s Approach to Settling Cases," appears in the May/June issue of Forum Magazine.  The full text is available from the Consumer Attorneys of California. 

At least 10 people aboard United Flight 935 were hurt when the aircraft encountered severe turbulence.  Is the airline responsible for compensating its injured passengers?

Continental 767 CabinBecause Flight 935 was an international flight, a treaty known as the Montreal Convention governs the passengers’ claims.  The Montreal Convention makes the airline liable for any injuries suffered on board the aircraft due to an "accident."  The definition of "accident" includes an encounter with severe turbulence.  The passenger need not prove that the airline was at fault for the accident.  Under the Convention, the airline is automatically liable.

Some courts have ruled that while an airline is automatically liable for any "accident" on an international flight, its obligation to compensate an injured passenger may be reduced if the passenger himself contributed to his injury.  One issue that typically arises in turbulence cases is whether the injured passenger should have been wearing his seat belt.  In this case, it appears the seat belt sign was off and the turbulence competely unexpected, so that should not be an issue.

As discussed here, the Convention entitles the passengers to be compensated for the emotional distress they have suffered, but only if they also suffered some sort of physical injury as well.

Finally, as discussed here, the passengers are entitled to sue the airline for compensation in the United States, and in particular in California (Los Angeles or San Francisco), regardless of their citizenship or final destination. 

Ten years ago, an Air France Concorde SST departing from Charles de Gaulle Airport ran over a strip of metal on the runway.  One of the Concorde’s tires exploded.  A chunk of the debris from the tire punctured the Concorde’s fuel tank. Fuel leaked from the tank, and into an engine. The ensuing fire and engine failure brought down the aircraft. 113 people were killed.

The Crash Was Avoidable

The metal strip fell onto the runway from a Continental Airlines DC-10.  Had Continental’s mechanics attached it properly, it wouldn’t have fallen off.  Continental’s maintenance practices were sloppy.

It is not unusual for airplane tires to rupture during takeoff for one reason or another.  On most airliners, tire blow-outs pose no serious safety threat.  That’s not the case with the Concorde. Unlike other aircraft, the Concorde’s fuel tanks are positioned directly over the tires.  The tanks are therefore at risk of being ruptured if a tire explodes.  Furthermore, the aircraft’s engines are positioned so thHenri Perrier (Third from Left)at any fuel from a rupture could easily start a fire.  That makes the Concorde design suspect.

This wasn’t the first time a blown tire ruptured a Concorde’s fuel tank. In fact, there was a string of previous incidents. So the potential for disaster was obvious. Nonetheless, Air France, as well as the Concorde’s manufacturer, chose to simply ignore the problem and hope for the best. 

It was a bad decision.

The Criminal Trial

A criminal trial began in France in February. Yesterday, French prosecutors asked that Henri Perrier, the engineer who most refer to as the “father” of the Concorde, be sentenced to jail, but that the sentence be suspended.  (Perrier is third from left in this 1969 photo.)  Prosecutors asked for the same for the two Continental Airlines mechanics whose sloppy maintenance allowed the metal strip to end up on the runway.

Some suggest the trial is a colossal waste of time and effort. What, after all, is the point? How will the trial enhance aviation safety?  Certainly, it won’t help the families at all, will it?

No, it will not.  In fact, such criminal prosecutions actually impede safety. If the mechanics and engineers who are involved in an aircraft accident investigation need to be concerned

Continue Reading Concorde Trial: Criminal Prosecution of Chief Engineer Not in Best Interests of Safety