Says Manual Failed To Warn CL-600 Is Susceptible To Icing

Is the Canadair CL-600 overly susceptible to icing -- something that's not made clear in the pilot's operating handbook or in training documents? Eric Wicksell thinks so... and he's suing Bombardier for negligence.

Wicksell was the first officer aboard a Hop-a-Jet twin on November 18, 2004... when it crashed during take-off from the airport in Montrose, CO. That accident killed pilot Luis Polanco-Espaillat, and a passenger -- 14-year old Teddy Ebersol, the youngest son of NBC Sports executive Dick Ebersol.

Wicksell's lawsuit, filed in Fort Lauderdale this week, names both Hop-A-Jet and Bombardier... along with six other defendants.

But Hop-A-Jet president Barry Ellis says hold on there... his company is separate from the entity that owned the plane, even though they share the Hop-A-Jet name. He said the other firm simply owned the plane as an investment -- and leased it to yet another company.

"Hop-A-Jet never had any operational involvement in that airplane at all," Ellis said.

As Aero-News reported, the NTSB ruled in its probable cause report in May that "the flight crew's failure to ensure that the airplane's wings were free of ice or snow contamination that accumulated while the airplane was on the ground" contributed to the accident, adding "[t]his failure resulted in an attempted takeoff with upper wing contamination that induced the subsequent stall and collision with the ground."

FMI: Read The NTSB Probable Cause Report