The Secretary of Defense confirmed the son of Senator Jim Inhofe was killed in a weekend plane crash in northeast Oklahoma. Dr. Perry Inhofe, a 52-year-old orthopedic surgeon, died when the Mitsubishi MU-2B-25 multi-engine plane he was piloting crashed Sunday near Owasso, a Tulsa suburb.

“The Tulsa International Airport said the pilot of the twin-engine plane issued an alert at 3:45 p.m. Sunday asking for immediate assistance, then crashed five miles north of the airport in a wooded area. [Dr. Perry] Inhofe’s plane had left Salina, Kansas and was making the 43-minute flight to Tulsa when the accident occurred, according to FlightAware.com. Justin Allison of Tulsa, who was flying a plane minutes behind the one that crashed,  told Tulsa World he heard air traffic controllers report that a plane in front of him had experienced engine failure. ‘I couldn’t hear the pilot, but I heard the tower declare an emergency for him,’ Allison said. ‘Which is a red-flag raiser, because usually the pilot will declare the emergency. It makes you wonder what was going on in that cabin.’ Jake Bray told the Tulsa World newspaper that he saw the crash from about 400 yards away, saying one propeller appeared to be out before ‘it started spiraling out of control and it hit the ground.’ According to the Federal Aviation Administration, Perry Inhofe was a licensed pilot and flight instructor.” (Source: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/11/11/plane-crash-kills-oklahoma-sen-inhofe-son/).

Senator and pilot Jim Inhofe has flown for over 50 years, logged over 11,000 flight hours, and owns several planes. “In an interview earlier this year with General Aviation News, the senator said he taught his son Perry to fly in the family’s 1954 Grumman Tiger and that the tradition was passed on to Perry’s 16-year-old son, Cole, who made his first landing in September at an air show in Wisconsin. A tail number provided by the National Transportation and Safety Board shows that the plane Perry Inhofe was flying Sunday was a 1974 Mitsubishi MU-2B-25, a fixed-wing, multi-engine aircraft. The same model has come under increased scrutiny in recent years from the FAA after statistics showed a rising rate of accidents involving the plane. As a result, the agency developed a new comprehensive standardized pilot training program for the aircraft in 2008.” (Source: https://abcnews.go.com/).

The links embedded below provide preliminary news coverage of this flight-related tragedy and we at Pilot Law, P.C. are actively investigating this unfortunate incident. We are keenly sympathetic to affected parties in tragedies such as this, having litigated dozens like it in courts throughout the country and abroad and being fellow pilots.  In cases such as this, affected parties may have legal recourse against various entities, including the aircraft and/or component manufacturers and the owner/operator of the aircraft. We at Pilot Law, P.C. bring years’ of experience and expertise to bear and will diligently and relentlessly pursue the truth on behalf of the victims and their families.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/11/11/plane-crash-kills-oklahoma-sen-inhofe-son/