Here is the rest of the story of this accident. I am not afraid to call out the people responsible for my son's death.
First, I spoke with the lawyer today. The NTSB is a board, not an agency, that is nominated. There are no more than 4000 investigators to investigate all of the aircraft, maritime, train, etc accidents. They usually do a good job on major airline investigations. Many of these investigators are not pilots. They only need an MBA to get the position. My lawyer has dealt with this for the last 40 years. He knows what he is talking about. He spent thousands on my case with no return to him. There was no representative present at the tear down of the engine in this case. It says in their own words on the NTSB Accident website that:
*** Note: NTSB investigators either traveled in support of this investigation or conducted a significant amount of investigative work
without any travel, and used data obtained from various sources to prepare this aircraft accident report. ***
So no, they did not have to be present at this single fatality, general aviation accident engine tear down. They were not present and used data obtained from Pratt Whitney. PW is safe anyway because the engine had more than 5000 hours on it and would blame the maintenance on Martinaire. Cessna is protected because the age of the aircraft falls under GARA.
Everything falls on Martinaire mechanics out of Lansing, Michigan who took out the turbine wheel for inspection and incorrectly reassembled it to cause it to last only 30 hours. Improperly balancing the assembly would cause it to fail so quickly. The person in charge of the Lansing mechanics is Pat Jemison, Director of Maintenance.
So my 26 year old son moved to Lansing, Michigan from Louisiana to take on this job with his girlfriend, also a pilot hired by Martinaire. They both wanted to get valuable turbine time. I gave him a quick hug before he left and whispered in his ear "be safe".
He called us after a couple of weeks to say the Martinaire Lansing office was not doing things "by the book" as they were taught by the Martinaire home office in Addison, TX. The other employees there in Lansing told my son that after some time, he would do the same. My son didn't agree with that. He called his boss, Alan Rusinowitz, COO of Martinaire, to tell him about this. Did Alan go up there to straighten his employees out on this issue. No, he did not. He told my son to just do his job and not worry about the other employees. That was a fatal mistake. I blame Alan Rusinowitz for my son's death. Had he done his job, my son might be alive today. Had Pat Jemison done his job, maybe the mistake in the reassembly of the turbine wheel would never have happened. These people with have to live with themselves for not caring about the lives of their employees. I can only hope in Karma.
So, the day of the accident, my son's girlfriend was on the schedule to fly. She had less experience than my son so she had to copilot with one of Martinaire's established pilots. That day, no other Martinaire pilot was available to fly with her so they called in my son, who was able to fly solo. He flew to Sault Ste. Marie. The attitude indicator went out so my son called Lansing to say he would not fly the aircraft until it was fixed. The Lansing office, low on pilots, had no choice but to have his girlfriend fly a mechanic to replace the attitude indicator. My son flew the plane to Pellston to refuel before heading south to Lansing. It is when he took off from Pellston that he disappeared. This airport has no radar tower that could have traced his flight. It wasn't until hours later that his girlfriend called us to say he was late. A search was called around Pellston but no transponder was detected. We tried to call his cell phone but it was damaged. They only found him by driving around at night and detecting a strong smell of fuel in the woods near an intersection southwest of the airport. They found him under the engine. We got the call and our life has been a nightmare since then. Insult to injury is the NTSB blaming my son for spatial disorientation when we now have proof that he lost his engine.
This inaccurate NTSB report is because it's the path of least resistance, as my lawyer told me. They are protecting the industry.
It's a dirty little secret in your industry and you have a choice to believe it or not, but it is the truth. My son bet his life on it by trusting Martinaire. Martinaire fought tooth and nail to prevent us from just investigating the crash. They required court orders to do so and my lawyer has never run into that situation before. They know they messed up from the beginning. They had the gall to show up at my son's memorial. May they rot in hell.