PILOT'S ESTATE FILES LAWSUIT IN UNEXPLAINED 2003 AIR CRASH
Nov 7, 2004
By JOE DANBORN
Staff Reporter
Two years after Tommy Preziose's plane plunged 3,000 feet out of the
dusk into the Mobile-Tensaw Delta, federal investigators still can't
say whether it broke apart on impact with the marsh or whether something
slammed into it before it ever hit the ground.
The eerie details of Preziose's final moments remain an enigma and
a source of contention within the National Transportation Safety Board
and have sparked a $76 million wrongful death lawsuit against the federal
government.
In an unprecedented finding, Butch Wilson, the veteran NTSB investigator
originally assigned to the case, said in a preliminary report released
in April that the plane collided with an unknown object in mid-air. NTSB
supervisors in Washington, D.C., called Wilson's conclusion premature
and began their own investigation, which hasn't wrapped up.
One possible cause of the Oct. 23, 2003, crash that both Wilson and the
other NTSB officials ruled out was precisely the one posed in the lawsuit,
which was filed Oct. 25 in federal court in Mobile. Lawyers for Preziose's
estate claim air traffic controllers steered him into the tornado-like
wake of a FedEx DC-10.
A document accompanying the lawsuit accuses Federal Aviation Administration
employees of failing "to provide adequate vertical as well as horizontal
separatioclearance from the 'heavy DC-10.'" They also did
not issue "the required warnings to Mr. Preziose of the clear and
present danger of the wake turbulence he would experience," the document claims.
Wilson's report, however, noted that the DC-10 was flying 1,000 feet
higher than Preziose's Cessna 208B Cargomaster. Moreover, the report
said, the two planes never crossed paths. The northeast-bound Cessna would
have had to have been behind the southbound DC-10 at some point to have
been battered by the disturbed air left by the larger plane.
"Radar data shows that the C-208 was not in a position to encounter
the wake turbulence from nearby DC-10," an NTSB update declared in June.
Making a mystery:
While the preliminary report ruled out wake turbulence, it touched off
a mystery by concluding the Cessna collided with something in mid-air.
Wilson, who is based in Atlanta, had the Air Force conduct tests to identify
possible sources of nearly three dozen red polymer smears found on the
outside of the fuselage. Those marks formed a large part of the theory
that helped make this one of the stranger investigations in the agency's annals.
Wilson had the marks tested against a swatch of red fabric from inside
the plane, a piece of a red cargo bag, even a military drone. Nothing
matched. Ultimately, the markings and the severe damage to the plane's
engine helped convince him something struck the plane, his report indicated.
No confirmed wreckage from any other plane has been found and no other
planes were reported missing at the time. Members of the search crews
who retrieved the relatively few large pieces of the plane said it could
not have come down in a softer spot -- two or three feet of water atop
8 to 10 feet of "puff mud."
Nevertheless, Doug Hardy, an investigator for Pratt & Whitney who
examined the wreckage, said recently that the engine block appeared to
have slammed into something solid.
"It hit something hard," he said, "because the engine was
split. It actually came apart."
There was no evidence that the engine failed, he said.
Wreckage reclaimed:
By the time Wilson's account was posted, the wreckage had been turned
over to the United States Aircraft Insurance Group. After the Mobile Register
reported Wilson's findings, NTSB higher-ups took the unusual step
of reclaiming the plane's remains and having it sent to the agency's
academy in Ashburn, Va., for further review. Keith Holloway, an NTSB spokesman,
said last week that investigators have completed computer simulations
of the crash. The agency is waiting on the chemical analysis of samples
from some 20 possible sources of the red marks, he said.
Wilson had been unable to identify the source of a chunk of black metal
embedded in one of the Cessna's wings. Investigators have since decided
it came from inside the cockpit.
Wilson's supervisors haven't disavowed his assessment -- a mid-air
collision. The problem they have with it, according to Holloway, was that
they felt it came too soon.
"That's a statement that is a conclusion," he said, "and
we aren't at a point in this investigation to make any type of conclusion."
Wilson declined to discuss the case in detail.
Preziose, a 54-year-old who lived in Mobile, was an experienced pilot
familiar with the plane and the area. No one has suggested that the mildly
overcast skies were a factor, and the plane had passed a routine maintenance
check days earlier.
Flying for DHL Worldwide Express with the call sign Night Ship 282, Preziose
took off from Mobile Downtown Airport at Brookley with 420 pounds of business
letters. Air traffic control recordings and radar data indicated his ascent
to his cruising altitude of 3,000 feet was uneventful.
'I need to deviate':
Around 7:45 p.m., Wilson's report states, Preziose had the second
of two exchanges with an air traffic controller about the location of
the DC-10, acknowledging he saw it above him and more than a mile away.
Seconds later, he burst on the radio repeating, "I needed to deviate."
The transmission cut off when he was saying it a fourth time, right about
the time the plane vanished from radar.
Preziose's sister, Moira Wade, is also a pilot and has visited the
crash site numerous times collecting debris from the plane. She thinks
her brother knew he would not survive and that his last words were meant
to give investigators a clue to what happened, that he had to make an
emergency maneuver to avoid something.
The lawsuit suggests Preziose's words were a correction to the air
traffic controllers, that they should have sent him on a different flight
path. NTSB officials have not publicly addressed the significance of the words.
Down in the Delta:
Preziose's remains were found amid the wreckage in Big Bateau Bay
in the W.L. Holland Wildlife Management Area, a locale popular with hunters
seeking ducks and boar. The spot is near Spanish Fort and about a mile
north of the Causeway.
Documents filed in Mobile County Circuit Court last fall on behalf of
Preziose's estate named FedEx and Cessna as potential defendants,
though the estate's lawyers apparently backed off that course. Greg
Breedlove, one of the lawyers for the estate, downplayed the significance
of the red marks.
"We believe that the markings were already on the plane before the
accident," perhaps from the Cessna being grazed by airport ground
equipment, he said last month.
Lawyers for the FAA had not filed a response to the lawsuit as of Wednesday.
Holloway offered no timetable for the final report. Investigators have
been stretched particularly thin lately, he said. It was only last week
that the agency issued its report on the Nov. 12, 2001, crash of American
Airlines Flight 587, which killed 265 people in the New York City borough
of Queens. And investigators also haven't released their findings
on the April 24, 2003, crash at Brookley that killed pilot Marvin T. Anderson,
44, of Atlanta.
As for what happened to Night Ship 282, "It's gonna be a while
before we have a conclusion on this investigation," Holloway said.