Suit blames FAA for crash that killed family of three

<p>A lawsuit filed on behalf of a Georgia family killed when their single-engine plane crashed in rural northern Pennsylvania blames the Federal Aviation Administration for not preventing the accident.</p><p>The federal wrongful-death suit, filed by the court-appointed representative of Peter and JoEllen Sandek and their 13-year-old son Kyle, blames air traffic controllers at the FAAs Cleveland Air Route Traffic Control Center for careless and negligent acts and omissions.</p><p>The planes navigational and flight-control systems began to fail shortly after takeoff from Bradford Regional Airport in McKean County, about 70 miles east of Erie, on Nov. 26, 2000. The family was returning home to Atlanta after spending Thanksgiving with relatives in New York.</p><p>Peter Sandek, the pilot, kept asking the controller for assistance, and unfortunately ... the controller did not get him information that would have been helpful to him to bring the aircraft back to the airport safely, said plaintiffs attorney Arthur Alan Wolk on Friday.</p><p>The four-seat plane crashed in the woods about eight miles from the airport. Firefighters said that it was engulfed in flames when they reached the scene.</p><p>FAAs eastern regional spokesman, Jim A. Peters, declined to comment, but a National Transportation Safety Board report issued two years ago said the likely cause of the crash was low cloud cover and pilot inexperience.</p><p>In that report, investigators said the air traffic controller gave Peter Sandek numerous instructions, but he had difficulty complying with them. He had received his flight-instrument rating about 10 days before the crash, the report noted.</p><p>Wolk said that the failure of a vacuum pump caused some of the planes critical instruments to stop working, which required the control center to give Sandek oral guidance in returning to the airport.</p><p>For all practical purposes, (that) didnt happen at all. Although the controller, once he got a handle on how serious things were, he gave it a stab, but it was the proverbial too little, too late, Wolk said. I think it took inordinately long for the controller to appreciate just how serious the incident was.</p><p>Among the FAAs 19 wrongful breaches alleged in the suit are failing to pay adequate attention to Peter Sandeks call for help, failing to ascertain the aircrafts altitude or flight conditions and acting in a careless and reckless manner.</p><p>Wolk pursued an administrative claim with the FAA before filing the federal lawsuit on Nov. 21 in federal court in Scranton. He was informed by a U.S. Department of Transportation lawyer in May that the agencys own review did not reveal a basis for its liability, according to court records.</p><p>The suit seeks damages in excess of $150,000.</p><p>Relatives said that Peter and JoEllen Sandek, both 49, were recently retired from BellSouth Corp. Their son attended Our Lady of the Assumption Catholic School in Atlanta.</p>