The National Transportation Safety Board has released its final report on what its investigation shows about the cause of the 2014 plane crash that killed well known area business people and philanthropists, Larry and Jane Glazer.
That crash of the jet piloted by real estate developer Larry Glazer who was traveling with his wife Jane, also a local business executive, happened more than three years ago, on September 5, 2014.
The Socata aircraft crashed while the Glazers were heading to Florida. The plane crashed nearly 6 hours after takeoff, off the coast of Jamaica, although the NTSB report indicates Glazer started to report problems with the aircraft about an hour and 40 minutes into the flight.
It turned out to be a problem with the aircraft’s pressurization, which eventually caused the Glazers to lose consciousness.
The NTSB attributes the probable cause of the accident to be the design of the cabin pressurization system, which made it prone to unnecessary shutdown, combined with a checklist design that did not make it clear that in an emergency the flight crew should first put on their oxygen masks.
The report says the following the accident, the French airplane manufacturer revised the emergency procedures.
There is an ongoing wrongful death lawsuit against Socata and a number of other companies that supplied parts or services to the airplane manufacturer.
A daughter of the Glazers, Mindy MacLaren, says as painful as bringing up the memory of the crash is, at least this NTSB report provides some comfort in confirming what the Glazers children always thought, that the crash was not due to Larry Glazer’s handling of the aircraft.
“He was an excellent pilot, he didn’t make mistakes, we knew that it had to have been something that would have made him make these mistakes, just because he was so meticulous," MacClaren told WXXI News. She says that, "while there is relief to know that it wasn’t him; it’s bittersweet because this was avoidable. The report just brings sort of everything back up to the surface that sort of settled down over the three or so years ."
Another member of the Glazer family, Ken Glazer, is a current member of the Board of Trustees of WXXI and his parents also had been board members at various times.
