Family of pilot killed in midair collision sues Kemper Aviation
A recently shuttered flight school is facing a wrongful death lawsuit brought by the family of a student who died last year in a midair collision.
The December crash that killed Cleon Alvares, 25, and another pilot was one in a series of three fatal accidents involving Kemper Aviation in a five-month span. The flight school west of Lantana closed after the third crash, which killed four, including Kemper’s co-owner Jeff Rozelle.
Alvares’ family accuses the flight school of failing to properly repair and maintain its fleet, allowing Alvares to go up in an unsafe single-engine Cessna 152, according to the Broward Circuit Court case filed last week. Alvares, an engineer from Mumbai, India, collided with a Piper Twin Comanche piloted by Harry Duckworth, 56, of Waverly, Pa., at about 2,000 feet over the Everglades near Parkland.
“The management of the school created an environment that fostered crashes like the ones that we have seen the last year,” said Hyram Montero, the family’s attorney.
The Federal Aviation Administration inspected Kemper’s seven airplanes in February, citing the school for seven violations involving inadequate maintenance or improper record-keeping, said FAA spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen. She described the violations as relatively minor.
Kemper corrected problems with six of the planes, while the seventh was not registered to Kemper, Bergen said. The owner of that plane surrendered its operating certificate, meaning it can no longer be flown.
The court case is the second against Kemper involving the string of fatal crashes. The only person to survive any of the crashes — Chandrashekhar Godghate — filed suit in January in Palm Beach County Circuit Court.
Godghate was a passenger in a single-engine Piper Archer that plunged onto the Quail Ridge Golf Club development west of Boynton Beach on Oct. 27, killing flight instructor Anders Selberg, 46, and pilot trainee Arjun Chhikara, 18. The plane crashed after reporting engine problems.
The third crash happened March 13 when a plane piloted by Rozelle crashed in western Martin County, killing him and three researchers who had been conducting a study on wading birds in the Lake Okeechobee area.
14/06/08 Jon Burstein and Ken Kaye/Florida Sun-Sentinel, USA