Airplane Crash / School Liability
$5m
A school is responsible for all of its students until they are released from school. To ensure that the students are safe, a school must always provide safe transportation from experienced drivers. This rule applies to all types of transportation including airplanes. And, of course, a pilot must know their limits and never fly beyond those limits.
Ella Jazz Kirk, 14, Michael Mahl, 16, and Ella Myers, 14 were high school students at ALCS in Silver City, New Mexico. ALCS’s mission is to provide primary education to middle and high school aged children with an emphasis on experiential and outdoor curriculum. Among its graduation requirements are participation in off-campus activities ranging from backpacking in the Gila Wilderness to mountain biking trips to internships with environmental advocacy groups or local businesses. One of its most selective and prestigious internship programs is the Eco Monitors Group—in which all three of the kids were members. Their work consists of approximately 30-50% classroom instruction and 50-70% off-campus field work. The off-campus work includes a range of forestry and river health monitoring projects, which include the placing and regular evaluation of forest transects on Signal Peak.
During the spring semester, the area of Signal Peak on which the children’s transects were located suffered wildfire damage. Towards the close of the school year, the students and their science teacher, Steve Blake, discussed ways of evaluating the scope of the Signal Peak fire damage and its impact on their transect project. Mr. Blake leads the Eco Monitors Group in addition to his duties as senior teacher and co-founder of ALCS. During these discussions, Mr. Blake assisted the students with requesting a ride on a U.S. Forest Service aircraft. The Forest Service declined to fly the decedents over the burn scar, and then regular classes ended for the semester on May 16. However, the school was staffed until May 23. During the week of May 19-May 23, the kids were on campus at ALCS working on the Eco Monitors Group’s annual grant proposal, as well as finalizing the yearbook for publication.
Sometime during the same week, Mr. Blake decided with his wife’s colleague, Dr. Peter Hochla, to take the children flying in his personal aircraft to view the burn scar. Dr. Hochla was a psychologist at the VA Clinic who travelled around the state to visit patients in his 2006 Raytheon G36 single engine aircraft, registered N536G. On Friday May 13, Mr. Blake approached the students on campus and announced the flight opportunity. During his discussions with the children about the flight, Mr. Blake stated, in obtuse terms to the children, that the flight must be kept a secret from other students. Several staff members were made aware of the flight by the children however, and they each assumed the trip was approved by school administration. It was not. Mr. Blake also insisted that the children obtain written permission slips from their parents in order to participate.
While arranging the flight, Mr. Blake spoke with each of the parents, reassuring them that the pilot “was in the Air Force,” is a “good pilot,” and that “he never flies when there is lightning.” Mr. Blake conducted no inquiry into Mr. Hochla’s record as an aviator, nor investigated the adequacy of his insurance coverage. In reality, Dr. Hochla was a poor pilot. He has a history of aircraft accidents, including one previous instance in which he overran the runway threshold at Whiskey Creek airport after landing N536G and damaged his aircraft, and another landing incident involving his previous aircraft at the Taos aircraft. Dr. Hochla has only been flying for 10 years, beginning his primary training at the age of 57. Though he served in the air force, he was a psychologist, not a pilot. His former flight instructors describe how he took twice as many hours of flight instruction as the average student to receive his private pilot license, and how they used to call him “Doctor H-bomb” behind his back. Several times, his instructors discussed with Dr. Hochla how “maybe aviation wasn’t for him.”
After obtaining his private pilot license, he never pursued a commercial pilot rating. In his subsequent years of aviation, Dr. Hochla continued to generate a poor reputation amongst New Mexico aviators. He once rented a Cessna 182 from Del Sol Aviation in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which is nearly as simple to operate as a primary training aircraft. Despite this, he required assistance from Del Sol staff in order to start the aircraft. Six months prior to the crash forming the basis of this lawsuit, undersigned counsel’s aviation partner observed Dr. Hochla taxi his aircraft past his home in Midvalley Airpark, turned to his wife and said “someday, that guy is going to crash and burn.” It is worth noting that the aircraft Dr. Hochla was flying when he and the children perished has been known by a more dubious moniker in the aviation industry since it first hit the market in the 1960s: “The Doctor Killer.” It earned this name for its propensity to kill doctor-pilots at a rate six times higher than it does the rest of the flying public. The Raytheon G36 is an extremely high performance business aircraft with complex systems, a powerful engine, a constantly moving center of gravity as it burns fuel, and unforgiving stall characteristics. Dr. Hochla’s previous runway overshooting in that aircraft amply demonstrates his under-qualification to safely operate it. In sum, Dr. Hochla was an accident waiting to happen, and any rote investigation of his credentials would have revealed red flags to ALCS personnel, had they only bothered to check.
According to witnesses and other pilots familiar with Whiskey Creek, it is an unusual and challenging airport from which to operate. Its sole runway runs approximately north-south (magnetic headings 350 and 170), while the prevailing winds at the surface almost always blow west-east. This creates an almost constant crosswind flowing directly across and adjacent to the runway, posing challenges for even experienced pilots attempting to fly the landing pattern. Additional challenging features of the airport include its high density altitude; field elevation is 6,126 feet above mean sea level, where the air is thinner than at other area airfields. This results in faster stall speeds and a corresponding decrease in engine and aircraft performance. The runway is also relatively narrow, with a surface measuring 5,400 in length by 50 feet in width. Finally, the field sits atop a mesa whereby terrain falls off sharply at both ends of the runway; some pilots have likened operating out of Whiskey Creek to “landing on an aircraft carrier.”
Unaware of these details of Dr. Hochla’s aviation past, Mr. Blake obtained permission slips from all three children and then carpooled with them to Whiskey Creek (94E) Airport at approximately 1515 on May 23rd. The weather was overcast, with ceilings at about 10,000 MSL. Additionally, the intended flight path travelled through and near afternoon thunderstorm cells, which witnesses described as generating lightning and microburst outflow wind shear. Dr. Hochla checked the weather just prior to boarding the aircraft on an aviation weather program featuring NEXRAD radar and seemed unconcerned with the gusty wind conditions and building convective weather surrounding the airport. It is worth noting that every software offering pilots such weather tools provide some variation on the following warning to pilots regarding its use:
NEXRAD data is not real-time. The lapsed time between collection, processing, and dissemination of NEXRAD images can be significant and may not reflect the current radar synopsis. Due to the inherent delays and the relative age of the data, it should be used for long-range planning purposes only. Never use NEXRAD data or any radar data to maneuver in or near areas of hazardous weather.
The children boarded Dr. Hochla’s airplane and they took off and turned north towards Signal Peak at approximately 1530. What follows is taken directly from the statement of Matt Ormand, a commercial pilot who witnessed the landing and accident:
About 10 minutes later I heard an aircraft over the airport and again went outside since the wind had picked up a bit more at least 15 knots continuous with the occasional 25 knots gust out of the West. Once I went outside far enough I then spotted the aircraft in a tight left downwind approach for runway 35 at about 600-800 foot AGL. At this point I commented to another pilot at the hangar wondering why the Bonaza was returning to the airport since the aircraft was down there about every 2 weeks on Fridays and always departed to the North but never returned back to airport after departing. The aircraft was in a very tight (very close to runway) left downwind [turn] when it turned a left base for runway 35, at that point you could see the aircrafts ground speed increase rapidly as the aircraft blew through centerline but the aircraft continued its approach to runway 35, once the nose of the aircraft was pointed directly at me he was in at least a 60 degree bank trying to get back on centerline. At that point me and the other pilot started saying 'GO AROUND GO AROUND." The aircraft then continued to descend to the runway and was fighting the crosswinds and wind gusts badly. The aircraft final touched down about 100 feet before the turn of to the hangar where my dad was working at. The landing was horrible, from what I can recall it was left main [gear], nose [gear] and then right main [gear] and the aircraft about 100 foot down the runway the aircraft finally looked under control. Right when the aircraft passed the fuel tanks in front of the hangar the aircraft powered back up in an attempt to go around. At that point I knew it wasn't going to be good and I told my cousin to call 911. The aircraft went off the end of the runway at a high angle of attack and also disappeared off the end of the runway and then it looked like the aircraft started to fly again as it started to gain just a small amount of altitude and for just a split second I said "I can't believe he made it!" right after I said that he started about a 15 degree bank to right turning east bound [downwind] then the aircraft started to sink[,] the angle of attack got steeper[,] and the aircraft disappeared out of sight. At that time someone said you can call 911 now. About 5 to 10 seconds later we saw a smoke plume northeast of the airport.
The aircraft suffered a stall-spin induced by Dr. Hochla’s lack of airspeed when the aircraft left the ground. In a stall, the airflow over the wing separates from the wing surface, causing the wing to stop producing lift. If it occurs while the aircraft is in a bank, it often leads to one wing stalling before the other, causing a flat spin from which recovery is difficult for the best pilots. N536G crashed in an upside-down orientation approximately 1 mile north of the departure end of the runway in a trailer park so violently that the engine was the largest intact piece of the aircraft remaining in the debris field, which was scattered about mere feet away from occupied homes. Most of the wreckage was consumed by an intense post-accident fire and secondary explosions caused by the aircraft’s onboard 100 octane leaded fuel and the presence of an oxygen bottle in the aircraft.
Patrice Mutchnick, the mother of Ela Jazz Kirk, was one of the first people on scene at the crash site, and witnessed the burning wreckage until first responders arrived and removed her from the scene. This forms the basis for her negligent infliction of emotional distress claim. Hours later, New Mexico State Police told the parents “we regret to inform you we have four confirmed deceased.”
Through aggressive litigation, we were able to secure the maximum amount of money available from the pilot and the school for the three children.
Close