A variety of factors contributed to the tragic crash of a Twin Commander into an Arizona mountain that killed a father and his three young children just before Thanksgiving two years ago. Linking them all, however, was a culture of “complacency” that existed among the co-owners of the company that operated the airplane, according to the National Transportation Safety Board’s scathing final accident report.
Among the troubling revelations in the NTSB’s report was the discovery that the accident airplane, a 1976 Rockwell 690A, was legally unairworthy at the time of the crash after failing to undergo required inspections when the new owners at Ponderosa Aviation Inc. took delivery of it the week before. The company’s director of maintenance, who was also the accident pilot and a company co-owner, knew about the discrepancy, and also knew that other airworthy airplanes were available for the trip, which was a personal flight to pick up the children of PAI’s director of operations, also a company co-owner and the pilot who had flown the first leg of the journey.
