Another Wacky Court Judgment
Aero-Views by Kevin R.C. "Hognose" O'Brien
There were no entries
in Weidner's logbook within sixty days of the crash, although he
had been flying the plane regularly and appears to have just been
irresponsible about maintaining the logbook. (Who expects strangers
to be pawing through his logbook trying to figure out why he's
dead?) The NTSB cautiously said this about that: "It could not be
determined from the logbook records if the pilot met the FAA
recency of experience requirements for instrument flight."
On the other hand, it can be determined that Weidner, who had
completed an instrument rating some months before, had "17 hours of
instrument flight time, 24 hours of simulated instrument flight
time." Now, he would have had to have 40 hours of instrument flight
(real or simulated) to get the rating. Having the rating says he
had the skills to fly in instrument conditions -- even three
approaches to going missed at minimums at three airports. But he
was awfully green in IMC for a gotta-get-there trip into frontal
weather with three helpless souls on board; his death in an
arboreal carambolage is proof enough that he didn't have the skills
his license said he did. Not that night, anyway.
I can well believe that
there was stress in his voice. Being over your head in an aircraft
is terrifying, and if you survive it, it's a great instructive
experience; the emotional overburden sears it in your memory, makes
sure you never forget it. But that's just it: like Donald Weidner,
you don't necessarily survive it.
Weidner also had therapeutic levels of OTC medicines, including
acetaminophen, ephedrine, and pseudoephedrine in his system.
Ephedrine and pseudoephedrine must not be taken within 24 hours of
flight, unless the pilot has undertaken a 24-hour ground test to
ensure that there are no side effects (I bet most of you didn't
know that. I didn't, but that's what FAA Aeromedical says). There's
no indication that Weidner did or didn't take this test. One
thing's for sure, these common OTC ingredients show up all too
often in dead airmen. Nobody expects common items like Sudafed and
Tylenol, advertised on TV, to affect his airmanship -- nobody but
the aeromedical specialists that have studied these
medications.
The pathological section of this NTSB report is terse, but in
several others, the Board's physicians explain the problems with
the ephedrines. Here's an example: "Pseudoephedrine is a common
decongestant that is found in over-the-counter cold and allergy
preparations.... Ephedrine is a stimulant, weight loss product, or
decongestant in many nutritional supplements and is an asthma
medication available over the counter in tablet form. Ephedrine has
stimulant effects and large doses have been reported to result in
excitation, trembling, insomnia, nervousness, palpitations,
elevated heart rate, vertigo, headache, sweating, chest pain,
abnormal heart rhythms, seizures, and death. Tolerance to some of
these effects may occur with continuous use. Ephedrine is not
typically sold in combination with pseudoephedrine in any cold
preparations."
So... how do attorneys get from this tragic set of facts, to
culpability of the FAA? Get there they did. District Judge Timothy
Corrigan ruled that controllers were 65% responsible for the fatal
crash, and Weidner 35%. Corrigan's bizarre ruling, which accepted
the theory of the plaintiffs' attorneys, was that the controllers
caused or contributed to Weidner's loss of orientation, by not
giving him current weather.
The claim was,
basically, that "the controllers did not keep him updated enough on
weather conditions." But the weather wasn't changing.
It was edge-of-minimums lousy at all three airports Weidner
tried. And he began with the *current* ATIS at JAX. (The pilot
himself told the approach controller that he had the current ATIS,
Mike). If he wanted to confirm it, it was just a matter of punching
a button -- his Cherokee Six was well equipped with modern radios.
The controllers passed him pireps from the planes that made it in
before him. They did what they could. They just couldn't get into
the cockpit and fly the plane for him -- which is where he
failed.
The FAA was probably targeted in this case, also, because the
JAX controllers did not have a recording capability. They were in a
second-class mobile tower during renovations to the main facility.
This lack of a recording created some of the murky area so
necessary to this illogical judgment.
Finally, the preposterous claim that Weidner crashed because he
did not have the latest Kollsman setting was aired in open court.
Evidence: a Sheriff's photograph of a barometer in a law
enforcement office that was taken that night. To get Weidner from
MDA (let alone from where he's supposed to be climbing out on the
MAP) to impact, his altimeter would have had to be over 200 feet
off, but that still doesn't answer for the radar track, which shows
an out-of-control spiral up and then spiral down. And the
barometric difference between ATIS Mike, which Weidner had at
1920:04, and ATIS Oscar, which was issued at 1940:07 within about a
minute of Weidner's impact with earth, and which Weidner probably
did not have, was trivial: 30.17 inches Hg on Mike, and 30.20 on
Oscar. (An intermediate ATIS, which Weidner also probably did not
have, also was 30.20). The difference between the displayed
altitude at 30.17 and 30.20 is thirty feet -- not remotely enough
to account for striking 75-foot tall trees, when MDA was 200 AGL.
Unless, apparently, you're a judge.
You have to love this.
An out-of-his-depth pilot kills himself and his passengers, and
Loopy Lawsuit Lotto hands their relatives a winning card, putting
the touch on the taxpayers for nearly ten million dollars. Was it
attorneys and lawyers working to protect a member of the old-boy
club? Was it simply confusion? Or that manipulation of technical
law that has driven justice from the courts and made them a place
of falsehood and randomness? We weren't there, and being a judge,
Corrigan is accountable to no one this side of God. So we'll never
know. But it wasn't justice.
Weidner seems to have been a decent fellow; he was well-liked by
fellow lawyers, active in politics (Republican, if it matters), and
several friends and relatives have commented on his love for
flying. I bet we'd have liked him if we met him on the airfield. He
probably was, generally speaking, a good pilot. Most pilots who
crash are -- except for that *one* time. But he wasn't a victim of,
as counsel would have you believe, careless or incompetent
controllers. He was a victim of disorientation, which is a deadly
biological phenomenon that lies in wait for any of us, and before
that of bad aeronautical decision making -- in both cases,
disorientation and ADM, his own. We don't have to disrespect the
man to examine his actions that night and learn from them. But it's
hard to have any respect for the Lewis Carroll experience that the
courts have become.
One of the lawyers in the Weidner case hopes that this sets a
precedent, he told a Jacksonville TV station. Of course he does;
the lawyers' share of the take is likely to be from three point
something to over four million dollars. And if we make a habit of
taking the wrong lesson from mishaps, we'll certainly have more
mishaps.
And who could possibly want that?