What should families know after a plane or helicopter crash?

The NTSB investigates. It does not represent you.

After a crash, the National Transportation Safety Board takes control of the wreckage and produces, often a year or more later, a probable-cause determination. Families should understand what that process is and is not: it exists to improve safety, not to assign civil liability, its probable-cause conclusions are generally inadmissible in your lawsuit, and it pays nothing to anyone. The evidence that decides a civil case, maintenance and airframe logs, pilot records and training history, fueling records, avionics and engine data, radar and ADS-B tracks, air traffic communications, the components themselves, must be pursued by the family's own counsel and experts, with preservation demands out before the wreckage is released, moved, or salvaged.

Who answers for a crash

General aviation and charter crashes rarely have a single cause, and the defendant map reflects it: the pilot or the pilot's estate, the aircraft's owner and the charter or tour operator, the maintenance facility whose logbook entries will be read line by line, the flight school, and the manufacturers of the airframe, engine, and components, full product-liability claims with their own proof. One federal wrinkle matters early: a federal law generally bars claims against the manufacturers of small aircraft and parts more than eighteen years old, though replacement parts restart the clock for themselves, which makes the maintenance history not just evidence of negligence but the key to which defendants remain reachable. Helicopter operations, including the Gulf transport flights that connect Houston to the offshore industry, add operator and contract layers, and can intersect with maritime and workplace frameworks this firm also handles.

Damages built for the worst losses

Aviation cases are usually wrongful death or catastrophic injury cases, and the damages architecture follows: Texas wrongful death and survival claims for the family and the estate, or lifetime life-care and economic proof for survivors, built by the same experts who carry any catastrophic file. International airline itineraries bring their own regime, treaty rules that can impose strict liability for injuries on international carriage, with their own two-year deadline. Deadlines generally run two years, but notice issues, international rules, and the wreckage clock all move faster, and the defense teams, for operators, insurers, and manufacturers, mobilize within days of every crash.

For families in the first weeks

Preserve everything the family holds, tickets, communications, photographs, the pilot's or passenger's records, decline early contact from operator and insurer representatives, and get counsel engaged before the wreckage is released. Silver Key Law approaches aviation losses with the independent investigation they require and the gravity they deserve, and the consultation, whenever the family is ready, is free.

Injured in Arizona? Some rules on this page are Texas-specific. Arizona differs on points that change outcomes, including pure comparative fault and government-claim deadlines. See our Arizona answers or call (888) 508-6967.

Related: Aviation Accidents · Wrongful Death Damages · Submit Your Case · All Common Questions

This page is general information about Texas law, not legal advice about your specific situation. Deadlines and outcomes depend on facts; talk to a lawyer about yours.