Indian student's death: Faulty fuel filter suspected in US plane crash

Boynton Beach: Federal investigators found an improperly assembled fuel filter on the single-engine plane that crashed on a golf course west of the city last month, killing a flight instructor and an Indian pilot student and critically injuring another Indian student.
An official with the National Transportation Safety Board also discovered a “fine-grained black particulate matter” in the Piper PA-28’s fuel pump, according to a preliminary report the agency released today.
Meanwhile, the sole survivor in the crash, which happened about 8 p.m. on Oct. 27 on a putting green in the Quail Ridge Country Club off Golf Road, is recovering in a rehabilitation center at Delray Medical Center. Chandrashekhar Godghate, a 38-year-old flight student who traveled here with plans to earn his pilot’s license before returning home to find work, was listed this afternoon in good condition, a hospital official said.
Godghate, who shares an apartment west of Lake Worth with a handful of other Indian flight students, was seated behind veteran flight instructor Anders Selberg, 46, and fellow trainee Arjun Chhikara, 18, during a training flight on the night of the crash, authorities said.
Both Selsberg and Chhikara were killed in the crash.
Federal investigators who pored over the wreckage in the days after the crash noted finding part of the fuel filter, known as a gascolator in aviation terminology, loose against the filter’s housing.
“A washer was found between the gascolator bowl tightening screw and the bowl,” the report noted.
*The airplane, in use by Kemper Aviation, a Lantana-based flight school, had last been inspected 24 days before the crash, when an overhauled fuel-sending unit and a fuel drain had been replaced on the right fuel tank. *The student pilot at the plane’s left-hand controls had logged 360 hours of total flight time, including 42 hours at night, and had last flown five days before the crash.
*The flight instructor at the right-hand controls had logged more than 13,000 hours in single-engine airplanes and held multiple certifications.
*The flight school reported the plane’s fuel tanks had been filled before take-off.
The NTSB will likely release a final report on the wreck in several months, officials said.
20/11/07 Michael LaForgia/Palm Beach Post, United States