Victim Developed Autopilot Later Sold By Chelton

The National Transportation Safety Board investigator now combing through the wreckage of last Sunday's fatal accident involving a Beechcraft B-60 Duke (file photo of type, below) at Gainesville Regional Airport says the airplane had an out-of-date annual inspection.

"Every year at a minimum, it has to have an inspection," said the NTSB's John Lovell to the Gainesville (FL) Sun. Lovell declined to say when Prof. Giuseppe Basile's aircraft was last examined, although he noted there were "no entries" on the plane's maintenance log to indicate it had been inspected in the past year.

Basile, 69, was a noted engineering professor. He was flying with one of his former students, Steve Varosi, 40, and Varosi's 12-year-old nephew Michael when witnesses report the Duke rolled to the right shortly after takeoff from GNV Sunday afternoon. The Duke clipped an SUV parked outside the terminal as it impacted the ground, sending the vehicle into the passenger terminal of the airport.

All three onboard the aircraft perished in the accident, although no one on the ground was injured.

Relatives say Basile and Steve Varosi were conducting a test flight for a new autopilot system the two had developed when the accident occured. It is unknown whether that system may have played a role in the accident.

While teaching Electronics and Control Automation at the University of Bologna in 1973, Basile designed the AP-1 autopilot. An updated AP-2 version of this system was certified in Italy, manufactured, and marketed in 1977 by the Italian company O.C.E.M.

In 2001, Chelton Flight Systems purchased the FAA-certified AP-2C and AP-3C variants of the original autopilot system, and after several further modifications began to market the AP-3C one year later.

FMI: www.ntsb.gov