Building time lands pilot in hot water

[FN FAL]

Crash victims file lawsuit
RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL
3/19/2004 11:38 pm
Two of five passengers aboard the airplane that crashed into a Reno business two years ago have filed lawsuits claiming the Truckee-based charter company’s negligence caused the accident, their lawyers said Friday.

Alexandria Hussey suffered a fractured back and hand, and Wesley Ploof broke an ankle and foot when the Beech King Air E-90 twin-engine plane crashed on the roof of an office building March 13, 2002.

Both are seeking unspecified damages in their lawsuit filed recently in Washoe District Court. A third passenger filed a suit in California last year, and the company settled out of court.

Ploof’s lawsuit also names the pilot, Jesse Gallagher, and Raytheon Aircraft Co., the maker of the King Air.

Messages left at the Truckee office of Regent Air Service Inc.— the company that owned the charter plane — and on Gallagher’s cell phone answering service were not immediately returned.

Tim Travis, spokesman for the Wichita, Kansas-based Raytheon Aircraft, said: “Not having seen the lawsuit, I can’t respond.”

But Travis said the King Air, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary, has been the most successful turbine aircraft made.

“It has flown all around the world in both military and civilian capacities,” he said Friday. “In those 40 years, the fleet has flown 40 million flight hours — 10 billion miles. Considering its use, it’s one of the safest airplanes out there.”

Hussey, Ploof and three other passengers were on a charter flight returning to Truckee from Durango, Colo., when a snowstorm forced them to land in Reno.

But the plane missed the airport by about a half-mile and crashed through the roof of an unoccupied building at 5458 Louis Lane.

No one was killed.

According to a recently released report by the National Transportation Safety Board, pilot error was the main cause of the crash.

The pilot “failed to maintain flying airspeed,” the report said. “The airplane stalled, rolled left and in an uncontrolled descent collided with a commercial building… .”

The federal investigators also said icing conditions and reduced visibility because of the snow contributed to the crash.

Jerry Mowbray, Ploof’s lawyer, said his client “sustained significant injuries to his ankle and knee” during the crash and has undergone “multiple surgeries” that have caused him to miss work. Ploof was 26 at the time of the crash.

Hussey’s lawyer, John Echeverria,said the crash caused a fracture in her back that has forced her to wear a back brace for months.

According to her lawsuit, Hussey, 36 when the crash occurred, suffered injuries “to the cervical spine, thoracic spine, lumbar spine, left leg and knee, right shoulder, right thumb and other injuries presently undiagnosed.”

Because of the crash, Hussey “has been absent from her employment, which has resulted in a loss of earnings and a loss of earning capacity,” the lawsuit said.

Also aboard were Greg Faulkner, 45 at the time of the crash; Darrell Linscott, 42 at the time of the crash; and Jason Wooley, 32 at the time of the crash; all of Truckee.

Wooley, who suffered minor injuries in the crash, said Friday that he filed a lawsuit last year in California against Regent Air. Its insurance company settled the suit soon after, he said.

Wooley declined to reveal the amount of the settlement.

“We all were very lucky to be alive,” he said.

Faulkner and Linscott could not immediately be reached.

Link to news story.......

 

[avbug]

So where does the "time building" come into it? What did that have to do with the subsequent events, and how was the pilot time building?

 

[starchkr]

avbug...

Me thinks you might have missed the pun that seems to have been intended.

It crashed into a "building"...get it, "building" time.

 

[FN FAL]

hahahahahahahaha....whoo boy, you can't save em all.