| Pilot Charged For Medical Fibs |
NewsLover writes "
Cape Air Pilot in 2002 Incident Had Diabetes, Criminal Record In the latest example of Federal authorities getting tough with pilots who fib on their medicals, Ronald Newton Crews, 53, of Centerville, Massachusetts, has been indicted in Federal District Court in Boston with 4 felony counts of Making False Statements.
The investigation that brought Ronald Newton Crews before the court began on the night of February 8th, 2002, when Crews was the sole qualified pilot of a scheduled Cape Air Cessna 402 service from Martha's Vineyard to mainland Hyannis. Crews became disoriented and passed out during the flight, to the alarm and consternation of all on board.
Cape Air security trainer Melanie Oswalt, then 24 and a 50-hour student pilot, took control of the unfamiliar plane and called for help.
As the plane flew past its destination, the 15-minute island-hop became an hour-long waking nightmare, with Crews periodically stirring to insist he was headed to Hyannis and grapple for the controls as the plane wandered all over the sky.
Another pilot, hearing Oswalt's distress, turned on the pilot-controlled lighting at Provincetown, and Oswalt brought the plane in to a safe and successful gear-up landing.
Emergency services responded quickly to the unattended airfield after the belly landing. Crews was taken from the airport in a gurney and neck brace and tested for drugs, alcohol, and neurological impairments, but his problem was determined to be something completely different: diabetes. His medical was (and remains) revoked, as his pilot certificate later would be.
It is probable that Crews knew of the disease. Crews had previously been grounded for some months, after voluntarily removing himself from a plane he was about to fly in the spring of 2001. He resumed flying in early January, 2002, after getting a fresh FAA medical and a separate physical that the airline demanded. But it is apparently the documents from this FAA medical that the US Attorney has called into question.
Crews's criminal history includes an air-to-air high-speed chase with US Customs in 1984, after he blew by a Customs checkpoint in South Florida. When Customs ran him to ground, his plane was packed with cocaine, and he had a large amount of cash and a gun. Sentenced to over four years in prison, Crews was released after 11 months in a local jail.
Crews came to Cape Air's Massachusetts operation from its Florida and Caribbean operations, where he was employed beginning in 1997 (Some of Cape Air's pilots follow its seasonal traffic north and south). At the time he lived in St. Thomas, USVI. The airline has said that it had no idea of Crews's diabetes, nor of his criminal history, nor of a 1985 pilot's licence revocation for transporting drugs in an airplane. The airline conducts a records check, but it only goes back 10 years, not far enough to catch Crews's drug conviction and sentence.
The line had restored him to flight status in January, 2002 after the FAA issued him a medical certificate and a private medical examination also cleared him to fly. After the inflight incapacitation, Cape Air ruled out any further flying job for Crews.
But now, the US Attorney has charged that the reason Crews was able to pass those medical examinations was simple: he lied.
Note: Crews's criminal history includes an air-to-air high-speed chase with US Customs!. . . . When Customs ran him to ground, his plane was packed with cocaine, and he had a large amount of cash and a gun!"
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