Family of Toronto Man Killed in Blue Hawaiian Tour Helicopter Crash Settles With Operator

On November 10, 2011, a Blue Hawaiian Helicopters Eurocopter EC-130 B4 carrying four sightseeing passengers and a pilot crashed into mountainous terrain near Pukoo on the east end of Molokai. All five people aboard died: pilot Nathan Cline, Pittsburgh newlyweds Michael Abel and Nicole Bevilacqua-Abel, and Toronto couple Stuart Robertson, 50, and Eva Birgitta Wannersjo, 47. The flight had diverted from its original Maui route due to weather, bringing the aircraft into terrain with low cloud bases, rain, and high winds.

Robertson was a senior manager at Toronto technology company Quartet Service Inc. He and Wannersjo were on what colleagues described as their first real extended vacation in years. The trip to Hawaii was their first, and the helicopter tour was part of an itinerary that also included hiking Maui's Hana coast. Witnesses near Kilohana Elementary School below the crash site reported hearing an unusual mechanical sound before the aircraft descended from the ridgeline trailing debris.

The Robertson family retained Michael Slack and Ladd Sanger of Slack and Davis, an Austin and Dallas-based aviation litigation firm, along with Hawaii co-counsel Richard Fried of Cronin Fried Sekiya Kekina and Fairbanks. The case was filed in U.S. District Court in Honolulu before Judge Barry Kurren. Named defendants included Blue Hawaiian Helicopters, helicopter manufacturer American Eurocopter, European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co., and Nevada Helicopter Leasing.

Slack and Sanger argued that the crash resulted from both the pilot's conduct and failures at the company level. Texas Lawbook reported that the attorneys pointed to the pilot's limited time flying Hawaiian terrain: he had been hired only months before the crash, and Slack noted it typically takes two to three years for a pilot to develop genuine familiarity with local weather patterns. The theory was that Blue Hawaiian placed an underprepared pilot into conditions the company should have recognized as beyond his experience.

The Robertson family reached a confidential settlement with Blue Hawaiian in March 2014, before the National Transportation Safety Board released its final findings. When the NTSB report did come out later that year, it confirmed the core of the legal theory: the board determined the probable cause was the pilot's failure to maintain adequate clearance from mountainous terrain while operating in marginal weather, which caused structural contact with the tail rotor and subsequent loss of control. The Robertson family's claims against the helicopter manufacturer remained pending at the time of settlement. Judge Kurren presided over the U.S. District Court proceeding in Honolulu.