FlightSafety suit says engine-repair firm responsible for crash at Eisenhower airport
FlightSafety International has filed a lawsuit in Texas against a company it alleges was responsible for the October 2014 crash of a Beechcraft King Air into its Eisenhower Airport facility that killed four people, including the pilot.
The lawsuit, filed in Dallas County District Court, said that Dallas Airmotive repaired the King Air’s PT6A-42 engines 10 days before the crash.
“Dallas Airmotive returned the engines and their subcomponents to service, representing that they were airworthy when they were not,” the lawsuit said. “This crash and Plaintiff’s damages were proximately caused by the above negligence.”
The National Transportation Safety Board has not issued a cause of the crash. In a preliminary report issued by the NTSB in November 2014, the report said one minute and 11 seconds elapsed between the time the plane departed the runway and the pilot, Mark Goldstein, radioed to the air-traffic control tower that he was declaring an emergency and had lost his left engine.
The plane subsequently crashed on the roof of FlightSafety’s building. Three of the four people killed were inside the building.
According to its website, Dallas Airmotive operates a regional turbine center in Wichita. The company operates three major overhaul centers in Dallas and nine other regional turbine centers in the U.S., Brazil, England and Singapore.
A Dallas Airmotive spokesman couldn’t immediately be reached for comment Friday evening.
FlightSafety said in the lawsuit it is seeking more than $1 million in damages.
Reach Jerry Siebenmark at 316-268-6576 or jsiebenmark@wichitaeagle.com. Follow him on Twitter: @jsiebenmark.
This story was originally published May 2, 2015 at 12:07 AM with the headline "FlightSafety suit says engine-repair firm responsible for crash at Eisenhower airport."