The widow of a man killed in a plane crash last year says flight controllers at the Salt Lake Airport instructed her husband to take the flight path that led to the crash.
Kathy Lynn Thurston has filed a $7 million lawsuit against the Federal Aviation Administration over the Jan. 16, 1993, death of her husband, Curtis Leon Thurston, 31.Thurston was killed when the Stinson 108-2 plane he was flying crashed into the mountains above Fruit Heights about 11:30 a.m. Thurston crashed shortly after he told Salt Lake Approach that he couldn't see because of the fog and asked controllers to guide him away from the mountains, the suit says.
Salt Lake Approach told Thurston to fly at or below 6,000 feet and turn to 310 degrees, the suit says. Thurston crashed into a mountain at 5,900 feet, according to the complaint.
Controllers at the airport should have known that Thurston was too low to clear the mountains, the document says.
Thurston took off from the Skypark airport in Bountiful and was flying to Ogden when the crash occurred. Two other planes took off about the same time but turned back, according to Davis County Sheriff's Capt. Jake Hunt.
Some Fruit Height residents heard Thurston crash into the mountain and called the sheriff's department. One resident spotted the plane with binoculars, dialed 911 and gave the location.
But bad weather hampered the rescue. A helicopter tried repeatedly to land at the crash site but couldn't. Finally, a 10-member rescue team hiked through waist-deep snow to reach the crash site. Fruit Heights residents told reporters they saw Thurston waving for help from the wreckage before he died.
However, paramedic Dan Yeaman said Thurston was killed on impact.
A similar lawsuit filed after the 1987 midair collision over Kearns cost taxpayers nearly $2 million. The allegations in the two suits are similar. The midair collision occurred moments after Salt Lake Approach instructed the SkyWest plane to fly a different direction at a different altitude. The plane was turning into that new direction when it collided with the small plane.
A federal judge ruled that the controller - and hence the government - was negligent in instructing the SkyWest pilots to take the deadly course. He ordered the government to pay nearly $800,000 to the families of the two men killed in the smaller plane.
The government settled with the families of the two SkyWest pilots during trial, paying each family $600,000.
Kathy Lynn Thurston has filed the suit on behalf of herself and the couple's three children. She is represented by an attorney from Washington, D.C.