LITTLE ROCK — The widow of American Airlines Flight 1420 pilot Richard Buschmann has sued Arkansas entities contending they failed to upgrade Little Rock's airport before the June 1, 1999, crash, which killed Buschmann and 10 passengers.
Philadelphia lawyer Arthur Wolk filed the suit on behalf of Susan Buschmann, claiming a runway at Little Rock National Airport, Adams Field, did not meet Federal Aviation Administration standards.
The suit, which was filed Friday and names the airport, the city and the state as defendants, adds a new layer of litigation to the caseload of U.S. District Judge Henry Woods, who has been hearing passengers' lawsuits against the airline.
Flight 1420 landed just before midnight in a storm, and never found a steady path down runway 4R. The plane swerved at the end of the runway and skidded across a patch of grass. It was traveling at almost 100 mph when it struck a set of orange poles, part of the instrument-landing system. The plane then pitched over an embankment, chewed through a steel walkway and hit two large steel poles before breaking in half and burning.
"The impact with the steel pole ... was the sole cause of Captain Buschmann's fatal injuries," the suit states. "In the absence of the steel pole, Captain Buschmann's injuries would have been minor and he would have walked away from the crash, as did his First Officer sitting inches away."
First Officer Michael Origel did not escape injury in the crash, suffering a compound fracture of his left leg.
The suit does not state which pole killed Buschmann, but does contend that the impact with the pole was a "second accident" that violated FAA directives that airports should pose little or no "second accident" risk to pilots and passengers.
Wolk said that he was still studying the composition of the poles but was positive that none of them should have been steel. He said that the city of Little Rock and airport officials should have used federal grant money to upgrade the runway area and make a clear zone for overruns.
"Planes leave the runway all the time -- pilots know this -- and that's why the regulations were put into place to begin with," Wolk said.
At a January 2000 public hearing in Little Rock, airport officials testified that they knew the overrun safety zone on runway 4R was less than what federal regulations required, but that the FAA had granted them a waiver while searching for solutions.
Wolk said Susan Buschmann, whose son recently graduated from aviation school, brought the suit because she wants to change the way airport safety is addressed and financed.
Tom Carpenter, Little Rock's city attorney, said Monday that while he had not seen the lawsuit, he thought it sounded like an "incredibly creative argument. This pilot was experienced and landed this plane in a thunderstorm and should have known what the various circumstances were" surrounding runway 4R.
At the public hearing, National Transportation Safety Board officials questioned why the airport did not have breakable poles installed at the end of runway 4R. Gary Skillicorn, an FAA engineer, testified that some of the poles could be designed to break away above a certain height, but that the bottoms of the poles were steel because they were planted in the Arkansas River's flood plain.
Wolk said the testimony at the hearing was "a bunch of double talk and flat wrong."
Earlier this year, the airport announced the installation of a runway 4R overrun plan that includes breakable concrete to stop runaway planes.
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