OWENSBORO, Ky. — The family of a student pilot who was killed last fall when the airplane he and his instructor were flying crashed in Ohio County during severe weather has filed a wrongful death lawsuit, claiming the doomed flight was a “totally unnecessary and avoidable crash.”
Connor Quisenberry, 18, of Beaver Dam, then a student of Eagle Flight Academy in Owensboro, and flight instructor Timothy “Junior” McKellar, Jr., 22, of Custer, died after their Piper PA28 went down Sept. 27 near Whitesville, Kentucky, during a nighttime flight from Bowling Green to Owensboro. Their bodies were found the next morning in a hilly and heavily wooded area as investigators combed through a massive 25-acre debris field.
The now defunct Eagle Flight Academy and ATP Flight Academy, where McKellar received his Certified Flight Instructor (CFI) certificate, along with several related entities, are named in the complaint. The lawsuit, filed Sept. 16 in Ohio County Circuit Court, seeks a jury trial, compensation for funeral expenses and other unspecified damages.
The accident remains under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board. In a preliminary report released last October, investigators confirmed the airplane was flying through poor weather conditions when the accident happened.
Air traffic control recordings referenced in the NTSB’s report revealed a controller tried to guide the airplane away from a storm with “heavy to extreme” rain before McKellar said the plane was “getting blown around like crazy” and reported “extreme turbulence” minutes before the controller lost all communication with the aircraft.
The NTSB’s preliminary report did not identify what caused the crash, but it revealed the plane’s left wing broke off the body of the airplane and said other parts of the plane were found throughout the wreckage. The NTSB is expected to eventually determine a probable cause for the crash and issue a final report.
The lawsuit points the blame squarely at the flight instructor, claiming McKellar’s negligence caused the “totally unnecessary and avoidable crash” that resulted in his and Quisenberry’s deaths.
The complaint references videos and photos shared to McKellar’s Snapchat account that went viral shortly after the crash. The images showed McKellar impatiently and audibly tapping his fingers on the side of the plane as Quisenberry appeared to conduct a pre-flight inspection, before telling him “C’mon.” McKellar referred to his student as “Forrest Gump Jr” in the posts, adding that Quisenberry wasn’t the smartest in his class. McKellar’s final Snapchat post, which was also included in the NTSB’s preliminary report, showed their flight path overtop weather radar indicating nearby severe weather. McKellar circled the storms and wrote, “headed are[sic] way like a group of pissed off hornets.”
Aimee and Andy Quisenberry, Connor Quisenberry’s parents, said the derogatory social media posts were among the factors that prompted them to file a lawsuit. “[Flight] students are paying very good money and a lot of it. To be treated that way is just wrong,” said his mother. “My hope is that changes.”
The Quisenberrys are hoping to prevent other flight students from enduring the poor treatment they believe their son received from McKellar in his final hours.
“I just don’t want to see another family go through this,” Andy Quisenberry said. ”If there’s a way to save one other family before I go to my grave I’ve done my job.”
McKellar received his CFI rating through ATP four and a half months before the crash and, according to the lawsuit, was briefly employed by the company as a CFI before he was fired for what the complaint calls “unsatisfactory performance." The complaint alleges ATP knew about McKellar’s “disregard for safety and professionalism” and “did not take adequate remedial actions” to address his “deficiencies as a flight instructor” or notify other flight schools or agencies about its concerns with McKellar’s performance. The lawsuit goes as far to suggest ATP “may have even actively concealed such information from the public, potential employers and others.”
The complaint further alleges Eagle Flight Academy, registered to Wilford C Voyles, Jr. of Owensboro, was negligent in employing McKellar, claiming the flight school “knew or reasonably should have known McKellar was not a safe, qualified and competent flight instructor to whom a student pilot’s safety should be entrusted.” The flight school shut down several months after the deadly crash.
Neither ATP nor a representative of Eagle Flight Academy could be reached for comment before this story was published.
This story will be updated.