Kreindler & Kreindler LLP recently filed suit in Florida against Bombardier, the manufacturer of the Challenger 600 corporate jet which crashed on November 28, 2004, in Montrose, CO. The deaths of three people, including the son of NBC television executive Richard Ebersol and members of the flight crew, further confirms a dangerous and deadly flaw in the design of the airplane's wings making it particularly susceptible to icing. The NTSB determined there was trace (that is an amount that is imperceptible to the naked eye) icing on the wings. According to the cockpit voice recorder, the pilots visually examined the wings minutes before takeoff and observed them to be clear of ice. Our investigation has revealed that Bombardier did not provide proper instructions and warnings to flight crews operating the Challenger in winter conditions and that the Challenger 600 airfoil is dangerously too sensitive to ice contamination.
Only after the crash did Bombardier acknowledge that potentially deadly wing contamination might be too small for pilots to see, even though this problem had been identified and made clear to the manufacturer by British aviation investigators after a similar Challenger jet crash in January 2002. British authorities had called for improved procedures for ice detection, realizing that an unsafe amount of ice, snow, slush or frost might be present on the wings but invisible to the flight crew. Those instructions were not issued until after the Montrose crash.
