World Courant
The households of six Canadian Armed Forces members killed in a helicopter crash off the coast of Greece are suing the plane’s U.S. producer, accusing it of gross negligence and a reckless disregard for security.
A 2021 air power flight security investigation concluded the CH-148 Cyclone helicopter hit the Ionian Sea at full velocity in April 2020 after the pilot tried to manually override the flight management perform and didn’t see that the autopilot was nonetheless engaged.
The households’ U.S.-based civil motion declare alleges Sikorsky’s computer-regulated flight management system took “management of the helicopter from its pilots, inflicting it to plunge into the ocean at greater than 150 miles per hour,” Stephen Raynes, the lawyer appearing for the victims’ households, mentioned in a media assertion.
Because the helicopter went down, “the pilots and the passengers all knew that they had been going to die,” the declare says. Its allegations haven’t been examined in courtroom.
“Every particular person skilled unimaginable terror and fright within the moments earlier than the helicopter impacted the water, inflicting everybody aboard to undergo deadly accidents.”
Cyclone helicopters over CFB Shearwater close to Halifax in 2018. (Robert Brief/CBC)
The declare alleges Sikorsky, a Lockheed Martin firm, put income forward of security and did not conduct applicable testing or warn the Canadian navy and its pilots of potential risks.
“As a direct and proximate results of the Sikorsky Defendants’ negligence, gross negligence, and reckless disregard of security, Plaintiffs’ decedents suffered deadly accidents,” mentioned the civil declare, dated July 10.
“The Sikorsky Defendants have prioritized their gross sales and income over the protection of the passengers and pilots of their CH-148 helicopters.”
The lawsuit was filed within the U.S. District Court docket for the Japanese District of Pennsylvania. That is the place a now-closed facility constructed, upgraded and examined the CH-148, the declare mentioned.
The crash is taken into account the largest single-day lack of life for Canada’s navy because the Afghan battle. It claimed the lives of Capt. Kevin Hagen, Capt. Brenden MacDonald, Capt. Maxime Miron-Morin, Grasp-Cpl. Matthew Cousins, Sub-Lt. Matthew Pyke and Sub-Lt. Abbigail Cowbrough.
WATCH / Households bear in mind these misplaced in Cyclone helicopter crash:
Households bear in mind these misplaced in Cyclone helicopter crash
The household and associates of the six Canadian Forces members who had been killed in a helicopter crash are grieving in non-public as we speak. The Cyclone helicopter went down within the Ionian Sea one yr in the past.
The helicopter was deployed with HMCS Fredericton as a part of Operation Reassurance, a NATO mission to counter Russian aggression. It was conducting coaching with Italian and Turkish ships.
Those that died left behind spouses, youngsters, dad and mom and different members of the family who are actually looking for damages by the civil motion below the USA’ Dying on Excessive Seas Act.
In keeping with the wording of the Act, it may be utilized by victims’ households to sue the “particular person or vessel accountable” when the “dying of a person is brought on by wrongful act, neglect or default occurring on the excessive seas past three nautical miles from the shore of the USA.”
The lawsuit doesn’t identify the Canadian Armed Forces or Division of Nationwide Defence and lays the blame solely on the helicopter’s U.S. producer. Beneath Canadian and U.S. regulation, authorities our bodies can’t be sued when service members die or are injured within the line of obligation, the declare says.
The lawsuit alleges that Sikorsky “didn’t carry out satisfactory security evaluation or testing” of the CH-148 helicopter’s “EFCS,” a computer-regulated plane flight management system.
WATCH/A bittersweet return for HMCS Fredericton after lethal helicopter crash
A bittersweet return for HMCS Fredericton after lethal helicopter crash
HMCS Fredericton has returned to port in Halifax after its six-month mission within the Mediterranean throughout which six crew members died in a helicopter crash and a pandemic started.
Raynes mentioned within the assertion {that a} design flaw induced “flight management to be taken away from the pilots in the event that they made sure high-amplitude inputs to the helicopter’s handbook controls” whereas the the “EFCS maintained the helicopter’s airspeed.”
“If Sikorsky had adequately examined its EFCS through the design section, then it might have found its Command Mannequin Angle Bias earlier than killing six individuals,” the declare mentioned.
The Canadian Armed Forces began the method to switch its CH-124 Sikorsky Sea King Helicopters within the Nineteen Nineties and took supply of its first CH-148 in 2015, seven years after the contractual completion date, the lawsuit mentioned.
The lawsuit alleges Sikorsky knew Royal Canadian Air Power pilots had a protracted historical past of conducting a “multi-axis, low- altitude manoeuvre,” often known as RTT, and that it might do the identical factor with the CH-148.
The crash in April 2020 occurred whereas conducting that manoeuvre, which ends up in a “tight, skidding flip that places the helicopter on a heading 180 levels from the place it began,” says the declare.
The lawsuit claims Sikorsky did not warn the navy and its pilots that there “had been security limitations on the length, mixture, or magnitude of inputs pilots may make” below sure circumstances.
“Sikorsky didn’t warn the CAF or RCAF pilots, by manuals or every other type of communication, that it was harmful for pilots to manually override the Flight Director,” the lawsuit mentioned.
The lawsuit additionally alleges “pilot data shows and warnings” had been “insufficient and ineffective.”
“In violation of many years of acknowledged business observe and former admonishments by the FAA, Sikorsky designed the CH-148 cockpit in order that vital security data was situated exterior of the pilots’ efficient vary of imaginative and prescient and was conveyed solely by a change in color,” the lawsuit mentioned.
The lawsuit claims Sikorsky marketed a helicopter it “knew was unsafe” and “ignored subject expertise that documented unsafe situations of their product.”
The defendants named on the lawsuit embrace Sikorsky Plane Company (a Lockheed Martin firm), Sikorsky Worldwide Operations, and Helicopter Assist Inc. (additionally a Lockheed Martin firm). The households haven’t requested for a particular sum in damages; they need a jury to make that call.
The defendants haven’t filed an announcement of defence in courtroom. CBC Information submitted a request for remark to Sikorsky and Lockheed Martin.
Households sue U.S. producer over helicopter crash that killed 6 Canadian navy members
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