Personal Injury Law

Plane Crash Near Kansas City Kills Two

By Ryan Bradley, Esq.

Photo by KQTV, St. Joseph

Murray Brown, 47, and James Jambor, 24, were killed Tuesday when their twin engine Aero Commander plane crashed in Leavenworth, Kansas shortly after taking off from a downtown Kansas City airport, Kansas Highway Patrol said.

Both men were pronounced dead on the scene. Brown and Jambor were the only passengers on board.

The plane was owned by Central Airlines, a cargo shipping company with 36 twin engine planes in their fleet. A statement released by the company said Brown, who had 20 years of experience as a pilot, was doing a training exercise with Jambor when the plane went down.

While the cause of the crash is not yet known, the Aero Commander model has been under scrutiny from the FAA over safety concerns in the past. According to a Civil Aviation Safety Authority report, senior FAA officials met with engineers in the mid 90?s to examine concerns over the Aero Commander?s wings, which seemed to be prone to cracking from stress fatigue. This wing instability was believed to have caused several fatal crashes.

The Aero Commander model in the Kansas crash was built in 1971, according to the patrol report.

FAA and NTSB officials will no doubt look into the wing stability as well as countless other possibilities as they investigate the cause of the crash. These investigations are extremely important as they can reveal mechanical defects that can be corrected in other aircraft so that similar crashes can be avoided.

The Bradley Law Firm handles aviation matters, including jet and prop planes as well as helicopter cases. If you have any questions about these types of cases, please contact us.

Full post as published by Missouri Accident Lawyer Blog on June 26, 2008 (boomark / email).