Tuesday, the first lawsuits about the deadly plane crash in Washington, D.C., on January 29 were filed by a well-known aviation law company. They are seeking $250 million on behalf of the passenger’s wife of 16 years and their three children who died in the crash.
A recent crash between American Airlines Flight 5342 and an Army Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk over the Potomac River killed everyone on board both planes, including Casey Crafton, 40, of Salem, Connecticut.
Bob Clifford, an attorney with the Clifford Law Offices in Chicago, said in a statement on Tuesday, “Casey was an amazing person.” “He gave to others and loved his wife and children.” He liked being the coach for his boys’ youth soccer and Little League baseball teams. They will always be sad about him because their lives will never be the same. The family needs to know what happened to their loved one.
Crafton graduated from Bob Jones University in South Carolina with a bachelor’s degree in aviation management. He was on his way back from a business trip in Wichita, Kansas, as the plane to D.C. crashed. Crafton was working as a technical support manager at Guardian Jet, an aviation consulting company.
As of Tuesday, filings had to be made for both pre-case claims against the federal government and different filings to keep evidence safe after the fatal crash. The claims for $250 million have been made against the U.S. Army and the Federal Aviation Administration, which ran the Black Hawk.
Clifford Law Offices point to a report from the National Transportation Safety Board that says the number of people working in the Washington-Reagan National Airport (DCA) control tower at the time of the crash was “not normal,” and there were problems with communication between the tower and Flight 5342.
The FAA told Fox News Digital that it doesn’t comment on cases that are still being argued. Fox News Digital also asked the Army for a response.
The number of people working at DCA’s air control tower was “not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic,” according to a preliminary internal FAA report that The New York Times looked at.
The Times said that the controller who was in charge of helicopters on the evening of January 29 was also giving instructions to planes arriving and taking off from the airport runways. In most cases, those tasks are given to two managers.
There haven’t been enough people working in the Reagan Airport air control tower for years. As of September 2023, there were only 19 fully licensed controllers there. But the FAA and the controllers’ union asked for 30 controllers as part of their staffing goals.
Pete Hegseth, who is the Defense Secretary, told “Fox & Friends” on January 30 that the government “will get to the bottom of what happened here.”
“It is not okay at all in our nation’s capital or anywhere else. The military trains, and they train hard. We’re not going to stop training, even though this unit and this practice are taking a break. Hegseth said, “And we should have that pause until we figure this out.” “…The way we train has to be safe. This could never happen. And it’s not okay at all.”
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