This essay examines how pilot negligence was reframed as product liability through litigation, ultimately devastating the U.S. light aircraft industry. It reveals how safety improvements paradoxically increased legal risk, wiping out jobs and technology.

April 10, 2017.
This chapter continues the previous discussion.
What destroyed the U.S. light aircraft industry was not engineering failure, but litigation.
Safety improvements became legal traps.
Pilot negligence was redefined as manufacturer guilt.
As lawsuits multiplied, production ceased, and an entire industry vanished.
Jobs, skills, and technological heritage were lost.
This is not an accident of history.
It is the logical consequence of a legal culture that rewards blame over responsibility.

April 10, 2017.
This follows the previous chapter.
The incident began in the mid-1980s.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration recommended that seat belts for light aircraft pilots be upgraded to proper shoulder-harness systems.
Manufacturers complied.
They even advertised that flight operations had become safer.
However, even light aircraft are expensive.
Most owners could not easily replace their planes, so many continued flying with older models, and where planes fly, accidents occur.
One example is the Piper aircraft accident in Albuquerque.
The pilot placed a camera for filming in the front tandem seat and flew from the rear seat.
Failing to notice an obstacle on the runway, the aircraft collided, and the pilot was seriously injured.
It should have been considered pilot negligence.
However, the lawyer focused on the outdated seat belt.
He argued that “if the new model is safe, then the old model was unsafe,” and that this caused the serious injury.
The jury agreed.
Piper was ordered to pay 2.5 million dollars in damages, including punitive damages—enough to buy about twenty aircraft of the same model.
The same happened to Cessna.
Once a safer improved model was introduced, lawyers claimed that all older models were unsafe and demanded massive compensation.
Product liability insurance rose to seventy thousand dollars per aircraft.
As a result, production was halted.
Thus, the light aircraft industry was destroyed, along with jobs and technology.
To be continued.