Lawsuit Filed in Fatal Flight School Accident
- Thread starter MountainDude
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- Who you kiddin?
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Sorry. I read no settlement I I figured no settlement.
No, what I'm saying is insurance company shows up, estimates that the cost to rebuild the house is, let's say, 500k, and it cost you another 50k to stay in a rental home while yours was rebuilt. You get 550k.
You decide to say no to that and sue for 2.5 mil/person, you deserve to be taken to court for that and lose everything.
Every single one of these lawsuits should be fought tooth and nail. Just because you were scared for 15 minutes doesn't entitle you to 2.5 mil. Even if you have to go to therapy for PTSD (which might be the case), that's not going to cost 2.5 mil.
As I stated before, if we're going to demand millions because we were scared, I'll start suing every single idiot that makes my heart jump as they swerve three lanes without looking, threatening to mow everyone in their path because they missed their exit. Once the legal system gets overwhelmed with those stupid lawsuits maybe there will be a Supreme Court decision that being scared doesn't entitle you to compensation.
MauleSkinner
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So you’re saying the flight school should have no liability here.
Doc Holliday
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It's called Tort Reform. And with Congress filled with attorneys don't look for any changes to happen.
Oh, and the system is already overwhelmed with stupid lawsuits.
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That's what I thought based on the initial comment, but after a few more posts, it sounds more like, if you dare to sue for more than he thinks you should, you should get nothing.
Good luck with that!
Taking no position with this at all - but I definitely feel it’s worth learning to fly a multi engine aircraft from someone with a reasonable amount of experience. That being said, lots of places will have fairly fresh MEI’s teaching new students. I have thought about getting mine, but frankly wouldn’t feel all that comfortable teaching in them with such limited experience in piston twins. There are a lot of accidents where the VMC demo was let go too far. It should be taken to first indication and NO further with immediate recovery.
Lindberg
Final Approach
A tort system that allowed recovery of economic damages only would be ineffective, to say the least.
Total destruction of their home and yard? Hardly.
Father was shocked to find that nobody was injured. Even the dog was OK.
And not to be left out, the family of the student in the plane is suing as well....
www.kptv.com
Father was shocked to find that nobody was injured. Even the dog was OK.
And not to be left out, the family of the student in the plane is suing as well....
Family sues Hillsboro flight school, Alaska Airlines over deadly 2023 crash
20-year-old Barrett Bevacqua was training for a multi-engine aircraft license from the Hillsboro Aero Academy which feeds new pilots into Alaska Airlines.
pfarber
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The insurance company is going to pay whatever the max value of the policy is. It they had $1MM in coverage then that's all there is to get no matter what the jury awards. The flight school will go bankrupt, sell all the assets and settle with whatever it has from the proceeds. With smart planning you can run the business with no personal exposure (ie a Corp).The money that insurance hands out, comes from people like you and I. It works so well that everybody I know is quite content with stable insurance rates are certainly not increasing rapidly.
It’s disappointing that our culture has evolved into every tragedy immediately turns into a money grab. L
The family DID suffer a loss. They SHOULD be compensated. What I'm saying is that the SCHOOL can/should have done everything to protect its assets from loss... like 1099 the CFI, make the student have more than $5k liability coverage etc.
As for insurance premiums, liability coverage is fairly cheap. Its the 'comprehensive' / Hull coverage that get spendy. Just watch some youtube videos of some pilots doing stunts and flying wrecklessly... then ask yourself, again, why premiums are so high.
MauleSkinner
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They shouldn’t have let some shyster talk them into it.
Ed Haywood
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Anyone can sue anyone for anything, and they can demand whatever absurd dollar amount they want. That does not mean the final result will be anywhere near this amount.
Insurance companies hire lawyers by the million. This is their business and they know how to play it. They don't roll over.
Unless, that is, discovery turns up gross negligence or malevolence, combined with sensational damages. Then they will do their best to negotiate an acceptable settlement, rather than running the risk of turning it over to 6 people with an IQ of 100.
My company has been sued half a dozen times. Each time the insurance company hired a law firm in the jurisdiction to defend us. Each time the final result was similar: we settled for our deductible plus an additional amount roughly equal to the deductible.
It's just part of the cost of doing business. But it also forces us to do things to reduce our risk. Things like have a safety program, follow good HR practices, etc. So it serves a purpose.
But if you guys are suffering from low blood pressure and need to raise yours, continue to be outraged.
Insurance companies hire lawyers by the million. This is their business and they know how to play it. They don't roll over.
Unless, that is, discovery turns up gross negligence or malevolence, combined with sensational damages. Then they will do their best to negotiate an acceptable settlement, rather than running the risk of turning it over to 6 people with an IQ of 100.
My company has been sued half a dozen times. Each time the insurance company hired a law firm in the jurisdiction to defend us. Each time the final result was similar: we settled for our deductible plus an additional amount roughly equal to the deductible.
It's just part of the cost of doing business. But it also forces us to do things to reduce our risk. Things like have a safety program, follow good HR practices, etc. So it serves a purpose.
But if you guys are suffering from low blood pressure and need to raise yours, continue to be outraged.
luvflyin
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Whatsa elephant got to do with his?
Lindberg
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Blind men and an elephant - Wikipedia
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In these types of discussion, it’s more like the pinball wizard trying to describe an elephant based on touching different blind men whose information comes from photographs of different pages in the novelization of Dumbo.Blind men and an elephant - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
MauleSkinner
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I assume those are hypothetical questions.
If not, it’s probably in the vicinity of infinity+1.
Doc Holliday
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Hengelo
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Yes, with a sort if warbling Bob Dylan guitar acompaniment…
I assume those are hypothetical questions.
If not, it’s probably in the vicinity of infinity+1.
bonefishpete
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My sons flight school has some 30 C172’s
Every single one is registered N*****LLC.
I believe they all are separate leasebacks.
They crash you get their insurance and the burning hulk.
hindsight2020
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In the macro, it would shut down traffic count. This space is stale fam, we're still debating air cooled manual mixture here like it's the newest thing. It's what we do. The degree of change/improvement is too slow moving to keep this place traffic counting like reddit et al. The economics of [recreational] access already make it difficult, especially compared to pro pilot paths/forums. I don't love it, but it beats the place getting overrun with car talk threads.
bonefishpete
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These things happen when we all fly 50 year old airframes.
Clip4
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I am a proponent of establishing CFI certificate minimums at 700 hours and double that for MEL.
Doc Holliday
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Flying Keys
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In your proposal, how do you expect the 50 or so people that can afford the extra $50-70k to get to 700 hours to teach thousands of students?
hindsight2020
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I don't much care for most of his takes, but his polemics on this one are on-point. If I were engaging in the same, the answer to your question would be: figure it out, go time build somewhere else.
The subtext behind your representative complaint is the original sin: the airline-centering attitude that time building for a 121 job is ok, but not for an educator/developmental role. Remember the pearl-clutching about PFT in the late 90s/early 00s? Don't answer that, I know they don't. Hypocrites. Most of 'em these days think the Lost Decade was a fake moon landing. As I've been told on here, "thAt wAs a loNg tiMe ago, lEt it goOooo". A wild retort, given we trashed our country's M2 less than 5 years ago to float among other things, airline payrolls for them to stay home; whilst my wife lost RN friends on the front lines. Unreal. And Spirit has entered the chat... or is that too soon? Digressing.
Whether the fair wx fans want to admit it or not, the overriding reason regional FO work has been made livable, was because of the barrier to entry the 1500 rule brought about. People routinely overstate their position in life. Cabotage would single handedly throw most airline pilots, along with the entire underpaid downline of aspirants below them, right back to the IT/engineering/insurance/public-safety/laptop jobs they ran away from. They know it; I know it; but everybody acts like demanding that developmental jobs be afforded retirement-empowering wages is some sort of blasphemy.
Time building is a cancer on this industry, but it is a required barrier to entry for those who seek to protect their income at the expense of others. We're all rent-seekers, when income distributions are organized the way this industry does. If we were a restaurant, only the waiters could afford to go to work. Yet people want to pearl-clutch about food poisoning? Spare me.
When people bite the curb, and seminoles spin through overpriced suburban NIMBY motes because they were following the occupational imprudence the aforementioned income distribution engenders, I'm sorry, but FAFO. Maybe treating trainer role compensation with the gravitas it deserves should be a bigger priority for the "revenue center" employers. If that means more barriers to entry, so be it.
Pilots may have an irrational allergy to desk work, but rational economic incentives still rules the roost. No buck, no Buck Rogers. Frankly, I'm surprised that dynamic would be taken as a hot take, it's not even unique to aviation work.
Hengelo
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Always an enjoyable read @hindsight2020 
I'd prefer to see CFI'ing being the domain of grey-haired pilots with many thousands of hours of experience. Not sure how to teach them how to teach though...
I'd prefer to see CFI'ing being the domain of grey-haired pilots with many thousands of hours of experience. Not sure how to teach them how to teach though...
Flying Keys
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That’s fine, I get what you’re saying, but there’s an economy of scale attached to the whole thing. “Go build time somewhere else” is easy to say, but at the end of the day I don’t see that magnitude of a jump in required hours doing anything short of cataclysmically collapsing the pipeline. That may be necessary in terms of improving end quality, but the shortcomings would not be overcome because we’re talking a drastic, unsustainable reduction in throughput that could have further effects on crew shortages (going back to the notion of rest periods, etc). This falls somewhere on a risk analysis continuum and I’m not sure the marginal gains warrants such a drastic jump, anyway - would need to do some statistical analysis on that.
My guess is that in the end, it would be just another step to push toward reducing required cabin crew.
Flying Keys
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Or entice/incentivize them to continue doing it as a career. Or to provide enough safety net to get them through the medical roulette as they age. We’re talking a complete shakeup of the industry. Utopian for sure, I’d love it, too, but how do you connect reality A to idea B?Always an enjoyable read @hindsight2020
I'd prefer to see CFI'ing being the domain of grey-haired pilots with many thousands of hours of experience. Not sure how to teach them how to teach though...
It almost feels like a pyramid scheme, doesn't it?
But not enough
There’s something to be said for requiring some operational experience before becoming a CFI. In a perfect world a year/500hrs flying the line in an entry level commercial job would be a great pre-requisite. Alas, that’s also regulatorily impossible.
I expect the insurers will be the ones that sort out a solution.
Flying Keys
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Again, some quantitative analysis is needed. We hear anecdotes about edge cases, even right here in these forums, but how much of the whole do those cases represent? Same with all other forms of outliers, including accidents due to CFI inexperience.
It certainly is cyclical, which doesn’t help the pipeline in a general sense. However, I have a hard time calling it a pyramid scheme until looking at evidence over a broad period that the average applicant is unable to pursue their goal to completion due to anything other than the aforementioned cycles. I mean, people are still flying as a career, and they’re successfully building time while churning out mostly competent students.
What’s the question, again?
Flying Keys
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The actuarial tables, indeed, much like many other industries that involve risk. I just don’t see the needle moving all that much yet, despite cases like this one. If they had, it would stand to reason the insurers would have been all over it already.
Doc Holliday
En-Route
Can we borrow the word salad translator you are using? TIAAlways an enjoyable read @hindsight2020
Ed Haywood
Final Approach
This. By far the most challenging task I have encountered as a pilot is weather-related judgement, especially crossing frontal systems. You get that experience when you start going places for real, not from 151 mile "long XC" trips with students. I would not want a CFI without that experience under their belt.
MauleSkinner
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Replace “CFI” with “airline pilot” and the conversation still makes sense. That was the intent of requiring an ATP to gain entrance to an airline cockpit, but it doesn’t seem to have worked.
Flying Keys
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Exactly. It feels like the training side of the industry often looks at the weather as an effect rather than the larger picture of causality. Lots of biases and even hazardous attitudes follow.
bonefishpete
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So bring back hauling checks middle of the night in ratty 402’s?
I'm relatively involved at my local field's EAA chapter and I get to hear the experiences of enough student pilots (of all ages) to filter the outliers.
There IS a trend of higher hours count for the same level of knowledge. It's cumulative, from asking for slow taxi speeds to performing lengthy (even by student pilot standards) run-ups, to spending 20-something minutes flying to/from the practice area without teaching anything in-between. You can see the difference between the CFI that's there because he enjoys teaching vs the ones that are there for the hours. And the good one is outnumbered by a good margin.
Maybe if someone looked at how many students a CFI certified in his 1250+ hrs of dual given and used that as a metric, the quality of instructing would improve. The guy with 60 certified pilots in that time should get hired, not the guy with 10 or less. One can only dream...
MauleSkinner
Touchdown! Greaser!
So, get the good instructors out of the instructional role and keep the bad ones there longer?
Keep in mind that a good instructor isn’t necessarily a good pilot, and vice versa.