Apparent plane crash on TPC Scottsdale Golf Course

weilke said:
Huh ? It would have been perfectly legal for Pedroza to hire Valente to fly him and his friends in his aircraft. Valente was a commercial pilot with a second class medical. Unless Pedroza charged the passengers, this was not any kind of commercial operation. This would have been a simple part 91 flight with a hired pilot. 'Legality' was not a reason why the fiction of an instructional flight was employed.
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Depends on if Pedroza “held out” to the models. How did they know him? I’m not going to guess. But I bet the lawyers are looking for him saying “want a free flight to Vegas? Text me..”
 
denverpilot said:
Depends on if Pedroza “held out” to the models. How did they know him? I’m not going to guess. But I bet the lawyers are looking for him saying “want a free flight to Vegas? Text me..”
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There is no prohibition against offering to fly someone to Vegas if no money (or nothing of value) changes hands in exchange. He flies to Scottsdale, picks up his dates for the evening and flies back. Unless you start introducing things that we don't know to be true, there is nothing illegal about it.
 
weilke said:
There is no prohibition against offering to fly someone to Vegas if no money (or nothing of value) changes hands in exchange. He flies to Scottsdale, picks up his dates for the evening and flies back. Unless you start introducing things that we don't know to be true, there is nothing illegal about it.
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Was more interested in where the money of the dead people is going to go and who’s payin’.

You know the families of those models are going to claim they were headed for stardom and millions... as damages...

They’ll be looking for any sign he was over the line on “holding out” and the insurance lawyers will be putting on the cheaters and reading their own fine print to various other lawyers.

There’s no way some lawyer doesn’t make someone cringe by saying that wasn’t an instructional flight and then rooting around in the private versus charter ops regs just as leverage, even if it squeaks by as a private owner hiring a commercial pilot who doesn’t hold out flying services.

If they’re any good at their jobs, anyway.

The outcome of this crash will probably change insurance boilerplate on any policies that don’t already have limitations on who can be on board during “instruction” if anyone believes it was.

I don’t think anyone negotiating the settlements will, so it’ll head down the other path...

There’s legal, and then there’s “who’s paying for the dead girls” on this one.

Would be fun to hear the arguments but they’ll be private and the payouts will likely be sealed.
 
deyoung said:
What I'm about to say may come across as defending the CFI in this case, so let me start by saying that I'm not, at least not on the bottom line...

I'm not excusing the CFI here, and I agree that at the end of the day, this is on him---but I think it's worth acknowledging that these things may not always be as black and white as they can look in hindsight, and the path that ended up here may not be quite as unbelievable as the analysis would lead you to think.
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I was thinking similar thoughts.

Knowing what I know today, I don’t think I would have made that flight as a CFI. But a younger me might have.

And CFI’s routinely have to let their student pilots fly as long as possible before taking over. If, in this case, the student was flying, that may have been what happened - the CFI waited an instant too long. Or confusion over who was flying at a critical moment. Or myriad other scenarios.

Given the facts as presented, there was nothing illegal about the Commercial Pilot CFI getting paid to fly the group. But blurring the line and calling it an instructional flight was probably not the best idea. Though I have admittedly given dual to pilots who had passengers along in the past.
 
deyoung said:
Maybe the CFI asked the student about doing W&B and the student lied, either embarrassed or knowing it failed, and the CFI took his word.
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That’s a good point, the drug user would be much more likely to be confused and/or lie about the pre-flight items.

I suppose it was also possible the CFI was yelling at the student to level the wings and the drug impaired student just didn’t “get it” or respond as he normally had during lessons.

I also don’t think the student pilot was “holding out”. I think he just thought it was cool to go pick up the 3 models as dates.
 
As part of my curriculum I always planned at least two lessons with a near gross weight plane.

I have not seen anything suggesting that this was nothing more than a personal flight to apparently party in 'Vegas, so until there is solid evidence there was nothing illegal about it.

Heck the plane owner might have paid the "hot models" to go with him to 'Vegas, hoping for a "fair trade" later.....

I am sure lawyers are digging for every tiny clue to blame someone else if not working feverishly to invent a story.
 
I also wonder what the timeline is. Was the cocaine used before the original departure from Vegas or was it used just before the takeoff that led to the crash? How long was the plane on the ground in Arazona?

If it was used in Arazona is is much more likely the CFI and/or the passengers knew or were also using.

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk
 
One thing is for sure, the CFI will be held most responsible for this one and this is how it should be. Acting as a CFI is a big responsibility, not to be taken lightly. You have to know the student, the aircraft's capabilities and any other factors that will help to ensure a safe flight. Also, you can't take a students word for the W&B, fuel caps, airworthiness of the aircraft etc... or anything else that affects the aircraft's performance. It is a pain in the a$$ but it's part of the job. I was amazed early in my flight training that the instructor had faith in my preflight after only a couple hours of instruction. Shortly after, a new policy was begun at our FBO after a student on an instructional flight improperly secured a fuel cap resulting in a quick return to the field. Oops.

There are possibilities that happened in the cockpit that we will never know - e.g. did the CFI fight the student (that was possibly impared by cocaine) for control of the aircraft? There is also the possibility of a control system failure or gust lock that may have been left on and that will be determined during the investigation.

The most telling item in the preliminary NTSB report is the excessive wing rocking on takeoff reported by an eye witness. This tells you a lot about a possible issue with the W&B of the aircraft. We can make fairly accurate assumptions based on what is reported in the NTSB report and so far it would seem fairly obvious (even with the limited NTSB report) to most pilots why the flight ended up in a golf course rather than in Las Vegas.
 
As I stated before, the CFI is/was a friend of a friend, and it was told to me he had almost no flight time in a Comanche. And as a Comanche owner, the CG has little to nothing to do with this, and even if they were 200lbs overweight, there would still be no issue if certain procedures were followed.
 
Of course all of this falls on the CFI. No question. Student pilot means jack ****.

No reason at all this flight should have taken place. Frustrates me to no end. I’ll be that guy and say this likely would have happened sooner or later though. This coked-up wantaprenuer convinces his social media-hooked friends to go on a flight for Likes or whatever. Wouldn’t have been the last time a flight like this would have taken place.
 
kgruber said:
"Apparent?"
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Maybe the person who created the URL for the news article linked in the opening post thought that the pilot might have landed on the golf course intentionally, and then deliberately set fire to the aircraft. :dunno:
 
Palmpilot said:
Maybe the person who created the URL for the news article linked in the opening post thought that the pilot might have landed on the golf course intentionally, and then deliberately set fire to the aircraft. :dunno:
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That url was created for the very first breaking story moments after it occurred, before anybody really knew what was going on. All they knew at the time was there was smoke and fire on the golf course, and emergency vehicles were on the way. The original headline included the word "apparent". The story in the link has been updated several times since then.
 
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