Plane in fatal Long Island crash had smoke in cockpit just weeks prior, says surviving daughter in lawsuit: ‘Just fly the damn airplane'
Despite smoke in the flight school plane's cockpit twice just weeks prior, the troubled Long Island outfit refused to perform maintenance on the single-engine plane, the filing in Queens Supreme Court Friday contends.
That lax attitude towards upkeep led to the fatal 2023 fire and crash in Lindenhurst that cost the lives of Roma Gupta, 63, and a young pilot — and left daughter Reeva Gupta, 33, motherless, disabled and traumatized, Reeva Gupta said.
'My mother's life was lost, and the pilot's life was lost, and my life is forever changed because somebody wanted to make money,' she told The Post in an exclusive interview.
Reeva Gupta is suing 2 BA Pilot NYC and parent company Danny Waizman Aviation — a Long Island flight school at Republic Airport in Farmingdale which operated the plane — for negligence and the wrongful death of her mother.
The school's operator, Queens resident Danny Waizman, hung up on a reporter when the 2023 crash was mentioned Monday.
'This tragic and entirely preventable crash was the result of reckless disregard for basic aviation safety,' said attorneys Jordan Strokovsky, Ian Gallo and Mark Shirian. 'The evidence is clear—this was not an accident, but the foreseeable consequence of gross negligence and a failure to prioritize human life over profit. This lawsuit is about exposing these failures and ensuring that no other family has to endure such a devastating loss due to willful negligence.'
Reeva Gupta said that after she read the National Transportation Safety Board report — which says a leaky oil line likely caused the crash, and that two recent smoke incidents went ignored — it was 'clear' that Waizman was focused on 'financial gain at the expense of people's livelihood and lives.'
'The person you want the most in the most terrible time, most excruciating pain, the sickest you've ever been in your life,' Reeva Gupta said. 'That person you want is your mom, and that was robbed from me.'
Reeva Gupta had purchased a Groupon for an introductory flight lesson — a lifelong dream of the mother-daughter — at the school.
But as the flight was on its final approach on March 5, 2023, the plane — a Piper PA-28 — caught fire during flight and crashed, killing Roma Gupta.
Reeva Gupta's unnerving final memory of her mother, a longtime physical therapist at a special needs school who was looking forward to retirement as a full-time grandparent, was seeing smoke emerging from underneath her seat in the airplane.
The smoke then turned to flames, and as the pilot, 23-year-old Fayzul Chowdhury, made a desperate mayday call, Reeva Gupta scrambled around the small cabin, searching for a fire extinguisher.
Her last memory of her mother is hearing her yell: 'Reeva — get out of the plane.'
'The next thing I remember, I woke up in the hospital six weeks later.'
While the pilot and Reeva Gupta were saved by a good Samaritan who saw the plane come down, her mother died on impact, she was later told.
Reeva Gupta, a former neurosurgery physicians assistant at Mount Sinai West, spent six weeks in an induced coma while doctors treated the second- and third-degree burns covering more than half her body, followed by months inside a burn unit.
It wasn't until more than two months after the crash that doctors felt confident she had more than a coin-flip chance of survival.
Eventually four of Reeva Gupta's fingers were amputated, and to this day she struggles to walk.
The pilot died months later from his injuries.
Last October, the NTSB released their final report of the plane crash, establishing that the cause was most likely 'an intermittent electrical short circuit took place involving the fitting on the end of the oil pressure indicating line,' according to an excerpt published in the lawsuit.
The short damaged the line so much that oil began to leak and eventually ignite, 'which resulted in an in-flight fire,' the NTSB concluded.
Investigators found that the very same plane had prior reports of smoke in the cockpit during flights just two months earlier — incidents that the lawsuit claims were ignored by Waizman.
Former instructors told the NTSB that when they reported the smoke to him, Waizman 'brushed it off by jokingly laughing and saying 'don't worry, it's not a big deal.''
'Shut up and just fly the damn airplane,' one of the instructors alleged Waizman said in response.
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