US Government to Pay $3.4 Million over Fatal Plane Crash

By Thomas Hall

Published on September 11, 2006

Ford Cederblom and his colleague, Damon Lott, crashed into a California mountain in May 2004 while flying from Arizona to Carlsbad, California. An investigation found that faulty instruction from an air traffic controller was to blame for the crash.

When the accident occurred, the student pilots were flying the same route as four other planes from their flight school in Phoenix. Cederblom’s plane had a call sign ending in “4PA," which was the same ending as that of another plane being flown from the school. An air traffic controller instructed “4PA" to decrease altitude. The order was acknowledged by Cederblom and Lott, but was intended for the other plane.

The family’s lawsuit accused employees of the Federal Aviation Administration of negligence for not using the plane’s full call sign and for failing to recognize that the instruction had been acknowledged by the wrong plane.

Cederblom’s mother says the suit was never about money, but about trying to right a wrong and make the government take notice.

US District Judge Napoleon A. Jones Jr. issued the multi-million dollar award to Cederblom’s parents, writing that no amount of money could compensate the family for their loss.

Comment on this article →