Small Plane Crash in Alaska?

Juneau Accident Attorney Helps Surviving Family Members

Video Transcript:

Mark Choate: 

The challenging thing about plane crashes up here is often you don't know what happened, because our land here is so vast.

Rob Rosenthal: 

If you have a loved one who dies in a small plane crash, what are your options and where do you turn for help? We're gonna find out 'cause we're gonna ask those questions, and more right now on Ask The Lawyer. Hi again, everybody. I'm Rob Rosenthal with askthelawyers.com. My guest is Alaska attorney, Mark Choate. I'll remind you right at the top if you wanna ask Mark questions of your own, just go to askthelawyers.com. There's a button at the top that says, "Ask a Lawyer." Click that, it'll walk you through the process, it doesn't cost you anything to ask or you can call the phone number you'll see on the screen while we talk. Mark, good to see again. Thank you for helping us out.

Mark Choate: 

Great seeing you.

Rob Rosenthal: 

So how common are small plane crashes in Alaska? Have you seen many of these in your practice?

Mark Choate: 

There are a surprising number of small plane crashes here, first of all, we have a lot of small planes, maybe we have the highest ratio of small planes in the country for the population. A lot of people own small planes that they use to either get around in or to hunt or to go to lakes if they got a float plane. In addition, there are tons of charter carriers that fly to villages and to remote locations, and then, of course, in the summer time, we have a lot of tourists that come up and they will flight see and take small planes to get to locations. Most of Alaska's area's not on a road system, so the most common way to get around is in a plane, so we have a lot of planes in the air, and every year a plane crashes that kill people.

Rob Rosenthal: 

And when someone's killed on one of these plane crashes, Mark, I imagine the family, at first, especially, they don't know what to do, they don't know where to turn, what's your advice? What are some steps they should take? What should they do?

Mark Choate: 

Well, the first thing, of course, is to, I think, reach out for a law firm that works in this area. The challenging thing about plane crashes up here is often you don't know what happened, because our land here is so vast and there are so many mountains and forests and deep ocean and fjords where the water is 1000... More than 1000 feet deep, often planes just go missing, you don't have a crash scene that you can tell, you may find some debris somewhere on the water, or you just may not find planes sometimes for decades.

Mark Choate: 

So when crashes occur or planes go missing, there's often a kind of a big waiting period here as people try to figure out what happened and what occurred. The key thing is that most plane crashes occur because of pilot error, not all, but most do so that if you are a passenger in a plane, whether it's a private plane or it's a commercial plane, where you paid somebody to travel with them on a flight seeing trip or on a charter or on a regularly scheduled trip to a village, the normal place that you would look is to the insurance for the plane, which is usually provided on a per seat basis. So if the plane is a six-seater plane, they'll be literally, each person in the plane will have a per seat amount of coverage.

Mark Choate: 

In addition to pilot error though, there are other kinds of ways in which planes do crash, sometimes they crash because of maintenance problems where a plane has not been properly maintained, sometimes they crash because of problems with the gear itself on the plane where it has a defect. I've done a bunch of cases involving defective altimeters, and altimeters tell you how high you are above the ground.

Rob Rosenthal: 

Right.

Mark Choate: 

Well, when you're at... When it's maybe 40 or 50 below, if the altimeter is cold, we had cases involving the use of two different kinds of metal in the altimeter, which would cause the one would expand or contract differently than the other causing the altimeter to get stuck. So the pilot would be descending, watching the altimeter, thinking that the plane was at a certain height, but in fact it had got stuck and it was registering higher than their actual height and fly right into a mountain or right into the ground. And we have a lot of what we call nighttime VFR conditions where you are flying because you in theory can see the ground, but you may not be able to... If you're not expecting the mountain to be there, you may be in big trouble.

Rob Rosenthal: 

Wow. So if the surviving family, even if right away, they may not wanna think about a lawsuit, Mark, why is it advisable that they do contact an attorney right away?

Mark Choate: 

Well, gathering information, figuring out what happened, the sooner you do that, the better. There's no... These things often wait for the NTSB, the National Transportation Safety Board, to send out investigators from the FAA who will go in and look at these things, and they do a pretty good job of getting out quickly, but I have seen crashes where they get it wrong, and I've seen crashes where they missed things, so the earlier you get on these, the better. They're always just awful situations. So that's why you need to talk to a lawyer who does this kind of work.

Rob Rosenthal: 

Really fascinating information. I always enjoy our conversations. Mark, thank you for making some time to help us out this time.

Mark Choate: 

Great talking with you.

Rob Rosenthal: 

That's it for this episode of Ask The Lawyer, my guest has been Alaska attorney, Mark Choate. I wanna remind you again, if you wanna ask Mark questions of your own, go to askthelawyers.com, click the button at the top that says Ask a Lawyer, and it's free to ask your questions. Thanks for watching. I'm Rob Rosenthal for Ask The Lawyers.

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