Wellstones Pilots Article

[pipers]

MINNEAPOLIS -- The Federal Aviation Administration said it found no violations after reviewing hiring practices at the company that provided the pilots involved in the crash that killed Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn.
The review of Aviation Charter Inc. was sparked by news media reports of background problems with one of the pilots. It was separate from an ongoing National Transportation Safety Board investigation into the cause of the Oct. 25 crash.
Richard Conry, a convicted felon who exaggerated his flying experience when he was hired in April 2001, was the chief pilot on the flight that killed Wellstone, the two pilots and five others.
Conry trained for four months in 1990 to be a co-pilot for commuter carrier American Eagle, but he resigned while still a trainee. Aviation Charter managers said Conry told the company he had flown 400 to 500 hours as a co-pilot at American Eagle.
Conry was convicted of felony mail fraud after leaving American Eagle. Aviation Charter owner Roger Wikner has said he never would have hired Conry if he had known of the conviction.

 

[172driver]

And...I'm sure he must have been committing mail fraud while the King Air flew through an ice storm. Sounds like a major connection as to the cause of the accident.

 

[Rizer]

Lying on an application and being convicted of a felony may not be directly related to the crash but it says an awful lot about the pilot's judgement and risk tolerance.

 

[mckpickle]

Lying on an application and being convicted of a felony may not be directly related to the crash but it says an awful lot about the pilot's judgement and risk tolerance.

Horse Pucky. We dont know anything about the conviction or the terms of the plea agreement. The way this legal system works he probably just mailed a letter with no stamp.

 

[boxcar]

"Lying on an application and being convicted of a felony may not be directly related to the crash but it says an awful lot about the pilot's judgement and risk tolerance"

Where did you hear that he lied on the application? The article I read said the application asked if he had been convicted of a felony within the last 10 years. He truthfully wrote no.

 

[CatYaaak]

People don't usually lie unless they feel they need to, and I think the other poster's comment about "lying on the application" was a reference to his BS-ing his employer about his experience at Eagle, and the associated turboprop flight hours he claimed. He probably needed to in order to get hired. That division of Eagle was not AMR-owned at that time, and when the current employer called for his employment records they were nonexistant. That's not hard to believe since it was prior to the Records Act, and since he never made it out of initial training, they were probably tossed soon after. In fact it's probable that when this guy decided to pursue flying as a profession again and looked into getting his old records, he discovered this, and used this "black hole" as an opportunity to embellish. He obviously felt confident he could do so, and for some reason, felt that he needed to.

I don't think it's any coincidence that the flight experience he falsely claimed was similar in both type-of-aircraft (turboprop) and operation (Eagle was Part 135 back then) to the position for which he applied. He certainly told people he flew hundreds of hours at Eagle, and I've never seen an application that didn't include an employment history section with begin/end dates and "position held", as well as some kind of flight time grid or statement of hours. Nor have I ever been hired without somebody looking through my logbook at some point.

Most importantly, without claiming those hours he probably wouldn't have gotten hired (conviction record or not) because the insurance company for this outfit undoubtedly required a flight time/experience breakdown provided by the employer for any pilot serving as PIC. FAA legal and felony conviction notwithstanding, insurance rates on low-time PIC's are cost-prohibitive for most charter companies because they represent unacceptable risk by virtue of lack of time alone.

An addition, if he took the time to pencil-whip those hours into his logbook and they were included in the FAA logbook review for his ATP, he lied as well during the certification process.

Another indicator; he even went so far as to wearing his old Eagle uniform on charter flights, which not only makes him a total dork, but also serves to reinforce the notion that he felt confident with his lie.

Do we know why this accident occured? Not yet. Can we assume at this time the cause has anything directly to do with his background of dishonesty? No. However, if it turns out that his hiring was based in part on hoodwinking his employer and insurance company with imaginary flight experience in turboprops, and a lack of judgement or skill on his part (which comes through experience like the kind he didn't have) is found by the NTSB to be a contributing factor in the accident, then there no way you can say that his history of lying isn't relevant. In fact, it goes straight to the heart of the matter because he shouldn't have been there in the first place with the lives of unwitting passengers in his hands.

Personally, I agree with the post regarding his felony conviction for fraud (lying in some form) and serves as a reinforcing signpost for an apparent lack of judgement regarding risk tolerance. What bothers me most is the dishonesty about flight experience. If true, he indeed must have felt comfortable tolerating risk....the the risk he himself represented to innocent people who trust their pilot has experience, that is.

Ask yourself if you'd put your family on board an aircraft with a guy who needed to lie so he could sit in the pointy end.

 

[Rizer]

Mckpickle-

No one has ever been convicted of a felony for mailing a letter without a stamp. I know you were trying to be funny but felonies are usually serious crimes.

Boxcar-

Richard Conry, a convicted felon who exaggerated his flying experience when he was hired in April 2001... [/B]

Read the article again. When you exaggerate your flight experience that's called lying.