Company Found Partly Liable In 2003 Accident
A simple rule... one made very clear in all the training pilots
receive here and around the world is that if you can not proceed
under Visual Flight Rules, and are not IFR-rated and current, then
one should not proceed into IFR conditions. Many unwary pilots
break these rules - those that do are thereupon sorted into
two categories... lucky to be alive and unlucky to be
dead. It's simple basic judgment... or so we once
thought.
All that being said, a jury in Itaska County Minnesota has found
Cirrus Aircraft Corporation and The University of North Dakota to
be at fault in the 2003 crash of a Cirrus SR-22 that left two
people dead. News reports do not quantify how many of these jurors
were conversant with the FARs or the basic tenets/hazards/conduct
of VFR/IFR flight operations.
Minnesota Public Radio reports that the jury found that Cirrus
and the University of North Dakota's Aerospace Foundation were
negligent in failing to adequately train the pilot, Gary Prokop on
how to fly the plane under IFR conditions. Attorney Phil Sieff, who
represented the family of James Kosak, a passenger in the plane,
said Cirrus and UND did not provide risk management training
in-type.
"We contended very clearly that Mr. Prokop purchased and was
promised training, and it wasn't provided to him," said Seiff. "The
failure of that training directly led to the plane crash, and the
jury agreed."
The jury found Prokpt to be 25 percent negligent in the
accident, while it said Cirrus and UND bore 75 percent of the
responsibility. Prokop's family was awarded $9 million, while
Kosak's family received a judgment of $7.4 million.
Todd Simmons, Cirrus' vice president of marketing, says the
company is considering an appeal. "We are disappointed in this
initial verdict, but we're going to be exploring all the options in
the legal process for Cirrus aircraft," said Simmons.
In spite of all of the above, the NTSB's Probable Cause report
found this accident to have occured as a result of, "Spatial
disorientation experienced by the pilot, due to a lack of visual
references, and a failure to maintain altitude. Contributing
factors were the pilot's improper decision to attempt flight into
marginal VFR conditions, his inadvertent flight into instrument
meteorological conditions, the low lighting condition (night) and
the trees."