Company Found Partly Liable In 2003 Accident

A simple rule... one made very clear in all the training pilots receive here and around the world is that if you can not proceed under Visual Flight Rules, and are not IFR-rated and current, then one should not proceed into IFR conditions. Many unwary pilots break these rules - those that do are thereupon sorted into two categories... lucky to be alive and unlucky to be dead. It's simple basic judgment... or so we once thought. 

All that being said, a jury in Itaska County Minnesota has found Cirrus Aircraft Corporation and The University of North Dakota to be at fault in the 2003 crash of a Cirrus SR-22 that left two people dead. News reports do not quantify how many of these jurors were conversant with the FARs or the basic tenets/hazards/conduct of VFR/IFR flight operations.

Minnesota Public Radio reports that the jury found that Cirrus and the University of North Dakota's Aerospace Foundation were negligent in failing to adequately train the pilot, Gary Prokop on how to fly the plane under IFR conditions. Attorney Phil Sieff, who represented the family of James Kosak, a passenger in the plane, said Cirrus and UND did not provide risk management training in-type.

"We contended very clearly that Mr. Prokop purchased and was promised training, and it wasn't provided to him," said Seiff. "The failure of that training directly led to the plane crash, and the jury agreed."

The jury found Prokpt to be 25 percent negligent in the accident, while it said Cirrus and UND bore 75 percent of the responsibility. Prokop's family was awarded $9 million, while Kosak's family received a judgment of $7.4 million.

Todd Simmons, Cirrus' vice president of marketing, says the company is considering an appeal. "We are disappointed in this initial verdict, but we're going to be exploring all the options in the legal process for Cirrus aircraft," said Simmons.

In spite of all of the above, the NTSB's Probable Cause report found this accident to have occured as a result of, "Spatial disorientation experienced by the pilot, due to a lack of visual references, and a failure to maintain altitude. Contributing factors were the pilot's improper decision to attempt flight into marginal VFR conditions, his inadvertent flight into instrument meteorological conditions, the low lighting condition (night) and the trees."

FMI: http://cirrusaircraft.com/