Suit filed in air ambulance crash that caused 4 deaths

Oct. 17--SANTA FE -- A lawsuit has been filed against four aviation companies on behalf of the relatives of a patient killed in an air ambulance crash near Las Cruces.

Federal investigators say the aircraft was filled with the wrong type of fuel before it crashed.

The lawsuit was filed Wednesday in El Paso County (Texas) by attorneys for Austin Green and Derick Buhle, the sons of cancer patient Fred Green, 59, who died in the Aug. 27 crash. Named as defendants are Southwest Aviation Inc., Elite Medical Air Transport LLC., Amigos Aviation Inc., and Carey Aviation Inc. The plane belonged to Amigos Aviation of Harlingen, Texas, and was operated by Elite.

Also killed in the crash were pilot Freddy Martinez, 29, flight paramedic Tauren Summers, 27, and nurse Monica Chavez, 35. The twin-engine Cessna 421C crashed about 7 p.m. just after it had just taken off from the Las Cruces airport en route to Phoenix.

A preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board said the plane had just taken on 40 gallons of the wrong fuel at the airport, but the report did not say the fuel was the cause of the crash. Final reports from the NTSB can take as long as a year.

According to the suit, the plane arrived at the airport at 6:34 p.m. to pick up Green. The pilot gave a Southwest Aviation technician a verbal order for 40 gallons of fuel, which was put into two tanks, and the aircraft took off.

"Shortly after becoming airborne, however, the aircraft began trailing smoke," state the court documents. "One or both engines failed because they had been fueled with Jet A fuel dispensed by Southwest instead of the required 100LL aviation gasoline. The engine failure caused the aircraft to crash, killing all four persons on board."

A manager at Southwest Aviation, who would not give his name, said he had no comment on the lawsuit and would not say if the company had an attorney. Mike Carey, director of operations for Amigos Aviation, said he was not sure his company had seen the suit. "We fully anticipated those (lawsuits) would come down the road at some point," he said.

Rob Campion, president of Elite Medical Air Transport of El Paso, was not aware of the court filing. "Our insurance company is responsible for defending us in these matters," he said Thursday.

Green was staying with an older brother in Las Cruces while undergoing radiation treatment for a brain tumor but his condition had deteriorated and doctors decided he should return to the Phoenix hospital where he was first treated.

The type of plane that crashed was the subject of an 1989 FAA Airworthiness Directive, which is a legal requirement to correct a defect, according to the FAA website.That directive required a modification of the fuel filler opening "to preclude misfueling of the airplane resulting in engine failure," the directive says. It's unknown whether that modification was performed on the plane that crashed in Las Cruces.

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