Article published
Grand Aire jet flew with
FAA's OK
Plane in fatal crash had special permit
By CHRISTOPHER D. KIRKPATRICK
BLADE STAFF WRITER
The corporate jet that Grand Aire
founder Tahir Cheema was
flying from suburban
Ferry permits are issued by the Federal Aviation Administration's regional offices and give the owners or operators of aircraft permission to make a special one-way trip with aircraft that might have mechanical or other issues.
The permits are issued by the FAA's regional offices after an on-site, certified mechanic verifies the planes are airworthy.
Many times, the permits are issued with special conditions attached, such as stating that the flight must happen during the day or in good weather.
But the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the fatal crash that occurred shortly after takeoff, refused yesterday to provide The Blade with details about Mr. Cheema's ferry permit - including the name of the mechanic who certified the plane airworthy for the trip.
Mr. Cheema's ferry permit is considered evidence by the NTSB investigation, and will be withheld from public release until after the agency completes its crash investigation, said Elizabeth Cory, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration.
"The basis of a ferry permit is that it's saying the aircraft is OK to fly from point A to point B. But they normally have a number of restrictions," she said.
NTSB investigator Jim Silliman, who was reportedly working at the crash site west of the Spirit of St. Louis Airport yesterday, could not be reached for comment.
He has declined comment in the past about the investigation.
The Grand Aire corporate jet took
off Nov. 30 about
Mr. Cheema, 50, of Perrysburg, and
his copilot, 40-year-old Eko Pinardi
of
The crash and Mr. Cheema's death
punctuated continuing safety problems that have plagued the Swanton-based
airline, which last year had two air cargo planes crash on the same day. It is
the only time in
Three pilots, including Grand Aire's
chief pilot, were killed in April 2003 when their cargo plane crashed in Oak
Openings Metropark just short of
The Hansa jet, which sat for eight months at Spirit of St. Louis Airport while Mr. Cheema tried to sell it, was repaired twice during the day of its final flight Nov. 30. The first repair was for a battery problem, and the second repair, undertaken after an aborted takeoff, was to unclog the air speedometer, called a pitot static tube, a source previously told The Blade.
Midcoast Aviation, the on-site maintenance company that serviced the jet, would not comment on the repairs.
Although he took off from the Spirit airport in
The Detroit-area FAA office is where Grand Aire's operating certificates for its planes are held and is considered to be the company's home FAA office.
When Mr. Cheema relocated his
business from Custer to Toledo Express in 1999, the FAA relocated his
"certificate management office" to one in
The FAA honored his special request, but the agency would not tell The Blade why. An FAA official who did not want to be identified told The Blade it's not unusual for a ferry permit to be issued by the office where the company's certificates are held.
But the source also said normal procedure is to obtain the permit from the FAA regional office nearest where the aircraft involved is located.
In the case of Mr. Cheema's Hansa jet, that would have been the office at Spirit of St. Louis Airport.
Contact Christopher D. Kirkpatrick at: ckirkpatrick@theblade.com or 419-724-6077.
Article published
Grand Aire plane was
serviced twice on day of fatal crash
By CHRISTOPHER D. KIRKPATRICK
BLADE STAFF WRITER
John Bales, who manages operations at the Spirit of St.
Louis Airport, told a colleague he was worried when he saw an older-model
corporate jet belonging to Grand Aire, Inc., taxiing
near a runway Tuesday at the
"I said, 'This airplane's not going to fly, is it?," recalled Mr. Bales, a former midlevel official at
He told a colleague that the jet had sat for about eight
months on the grounds of the airport near
Later Tuesday night, after one aborted takeoff, a high-speed engine test along a taxiway, and a second visit to a mechanic, the 1969 Hansa jet took off.
But its twin engines quit shortly after takeoff, witnesses said.
The pilot of the jet, Tahir Cheema, a Perrysburg resident and founder of Swanton-based Grand Aire, Inc., and his co-pilot, Eko Pinardi of Fort Wayne, Ind., died when the jet slammed into Howell Island in the nearby Missouri River.
"The engines quit for some reason, and that's all we know," Mr. Bales said yesterday.
The aircraft's black box has been recovered, and federal investigators hope it will help them determine what caused the crash. Divers were still searching yesterday for a wing and part of the fuselage that ended up in the river.
Midcoast Aviation, an on-site
maintenance company that serviced the German-made jet twice Tuesday at the
Afterward, Mr. Cheema attempted a
takeoff to return the jet to
After the repair, which took about an hour, Mr. Cheema followed standard procedure and simulated a takeoff by speeding down a taxiway and revving the engines just to make sure the air speed indicator was working and the engines sounded normal, the source said. The test was a success, clearing the way for the second, fatal takeoff.
Tom Crowell, Jr., an agent with the on-site Jet Brokers
Inc., said the company agreed to watch over the Hansa
during its eight-month stay at the
While the jet may have looked "rugged," that alone wouldn't ground it, he said. "Airplane maintenance is so much different ... If you did that for a car, it would last forever."
Hansa jets are rare, and Mr.
Crowell said he "would be surprised if more than two were flying" in
the
"He was sort of the expert on Hansa jets around the world," Mr. Crowell said of Mr. Cheema.
It was raining and not snowing yet when Mr. Cheema and Mr. Pinardi lifted off into the wet night. Mr. Bales said none of the aircraft taking off through that point at the airport had undergone deicing.
According to the medical examiner, Mr. Cheema died of injuries to his chest and torso. Mr. Pinardi died from a head injury.
Contact Christopher D. Kirkpatrick at: ckirkpatrick@theblade.com or 419-724-6077.
Article published
Divers come up empty-handed
By CHRISTOPHER D. KIRKPATRICK
BLADE STAFF WRITER
The answer to why a Grand Aire
corporate jet crashed, killing the company's pilot-founder and a co-pilot,
could be resting at the bottom of the
Divers late yesterday afternoon were searching the riverbed
for one of the two engines witnesses said ceased working Tuesday night shortly
after the German-made, 1969 Hansa took off from a
suburban
Grand Aire's founder and president, Tahir Cheema, 50, of Perrysburg, and co-pilot Eko Pinardi, 40, of Fort Wayne, Ind., died when the plane slammed into Howell Island in the nearby Missouri.
Though most of the wreckage crashed on land, a part of the fuselage and other sections of the plane ended up in the rain-swollen river. One engine and a wing were among the aircraftparts still missing.
"What we want to do is recover the [second] engine and do a tear-down, meaning you take the [two jet engines] apart, component by component, and you can discover whether the engine was producing power [when it crashed] by the way certain parts bent or scraped against each other.
"It will tell if [the engines] were moving at impact," said Lauren Peduzzi, spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board.
Assuming the second engine is recovered, she said, "they'll do that next week."
NTSB investigators have interviewed airport witnesses,
personnel, Grand Aire employees based at
The fatal crash occurred nearly two years after three Grand Aire pilots died and two were injured in two cargo plane
crashes on the same day in April, 2003 - the first time a commercial air
carrier lost two planes in one day other than the
The 2001 attacks and the poor economy forced Grand Aire to downsize, and Mr. Cheema struggled the last two years to satisfy increased scrutiny from federal regulators and increased pressure from creditors. An ex-dispatcher for Grand Aire has blamed Mr. Cheema for the pilots' deaths and alleged safety suffered because he cut expenses too close to the bone. Mr. Cheema, a two-time winner of local entrepreneur awards, found himself and his firm owing nearly $10 million. He had to sell all but five of his aircraft.
But just this week, he engineered a refinancing plan that put to bed a lawsuit from creditor National City Bank, which had alleged $2 million in improper spending. The restructuring deal was a fresh start for a company on the rebound, friends said.
Mr. Cheema is survived by his wife, Judi, and three children.
One of his sons is a Marine serving in
Services will be at
Contact Christopher D. Kirkpatrick at: ckirkpatrick@theblade.com or 419-724-6077.
Article published
Grand Aire president piloted
ill-fated plane
Cheema was in
Debris litters the bank of the
(
By JOE MAHR and CHRISTOPHER D. KIRKPATRICK
BLADE STAFF WRITERS
After enduring years of safety complaints and financial woes at his Swanton-based airline, Tahir Cheema's rags-to-riches life ended late Tuesday when a plane he was flying crashed into an island in the Missouri River near St. Louis.
The Pakistani native and his co-pilot, Eko
Pinardi, died after their twin-engine jet crashed
into a tree on the island shortly after taking off in light snow and gusty
winds from a suburban
Grieving colleagues at Mr. Cheema's air cargo firm, Grand Aire Inc., vowed yesterday to continue the rebuilding effort of the 19-year-old company that Mr. Cheema started from his home. The firm issued a statement asking "everyone to pray for our friends and families."
An investigator from the National Transportation Safety Board arrived at the crash site yesterday to begin an investigation, but the agency declined to speculate on the cause.
This week's fatal crash occurred 20 months after three of the firm's pilots died and two were injured in two separate plane crashes on the same day - a dubious safety distinction that added to the company's problems.
Forced to downsize in a tough economy, Mr. Cheema fought the past two years to satisfy increased scrutiny from federal regulators and increased pressure from creditors.
The two-time winner of local entrepreneur awards found himself and his firm nearly $10 million in debt. He was forced to sell all but five of his aircraft.
But just this week, he successfully engineered a refinancing
package that led National City Bank to drop a lawsuit alleging financial fraud
at the firm, based at
To Grand Aire officials, the restructuring deal was a fresh start for a company on the rebound.
Mr. Cheema, 50, of Perrysburg and
Mr. Pinardi, 43, of
After the 35-year-old, HFB-320 Hansa jet underwent maintenance work, Mr. Cheema assumed the controls and took off from the Spirit of St. Louis Airport, said airport director Richard Hrabko.
Airport workers said they stopped hearing the jet's loud
engines shortly after it took off, about 9:15 p.m.
"It sounded to them like the engines stopped - the noise stopped," Mr. Hrabko said. "Then they heard a loud thud."
Driven for success, dogged by controversy
One evening a few days ago, several planes needed fuel at the Grand Aire facility. The technician was busy; so Mr. Cheema leaped to his feet and the company president began pumping gas, Mr. Atar remembered.
In describing his friend of 28 years, Mr. Atar, his voice strained, spoke yesterday of that type of dedication and tenacity.
"I can't think of any day I haven't seen him as excited and trying to make a difference - whether it be in the lives of people he has known and grown with, like myself, friends and family, employees," Mr. Atar said. "He was always involved and engaged in people's lives."
His drive for success began in his native
He arrived in
But within a decade, he had a master's degree in business
and a middle-class life as an automotive engineer in suburban
In 1985 he began Grand Aire in his spare time as a one-plane charter carrier. A week before his third child was born in 1988, he quit engineering to grow the business that specialized in delivering auto parts on-demand to factories across the country.
A year later, he moved the firm from
He drove a Porsche and lived in a $900,000 house. In 2000, he collected his second award as a local Entrepreneur of the Year.
Yet he did not avoid controversy, including when he first arrived in 1999 to Toledo Express, which is operated by the Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority.
John Robinson Block, a port authority board member at the time, joined two Toledo Express firms to complain that Grand Aire's side operations of fixing and fueling planes was unfair competition. Another port board member, Jerry Chabler, later suggested revoking Grand Aire's lease because of potentially unsafe fuel tanks.
Mr. Cheema had the support of the rest of the board, and he claimed that Mr. Block, The Blade's publisher and editor-in-chief, and Mr. Chabler were mounting a smear campaign against him.
But Mr. Cheema had other critics.
The Federal Aviation Administration demanded $1 million in fines for safety violations in the 1990s for everything from using unqualified pilots to not performing required maintenance. Mr. Cheema claimed the violations were overblown and the product of regulatory racists, but he eventually paid $150,000 to settle the violations.
With the economy tumbling after the 2001 terrorist attacks, particularly for firms in the on-demand air cargo industry such as Grand Aire, Mr. Cheema had to lay off most of his employees and slash operations.
In 2002 the firm suffered its first fatality, when a plane
crashed in heavy fog early one morning in
Two crashes, hours apart
On an afternoon with freezing mist, a company plane on a training flight crashed 1 1/2 miles from a Toledo Express runway, killing the chief pilot and two other pilots. The NTSB later blamed the crash on improper supervision by the chief pilot.
Five hours later, a Grand Aire
plane crashed into the
Mr. Cheema later recalled to The Blade that he vomited after the first crash and simply went numb after the second.
"They're like my children, these people," he said.
By then, the firm had 10 crashes in 10 years - far worse than any similar-sized competitors, an investigation by The Blade found. A national safety advocate called for the air cargo company to be grounded.
Marisa Stevens, a former dispatcher laid off last year, said she often overheard Mr. Cheema bad-mouthing pilots who pointed out safety flaws in planes.
"They were just beat up with verbal abuse from Tahir for grounding a plane," she recalled yesterday. "He did not care about their safety. The only thing he cared about was money."
Yet Mr. Cheema's friends rose to his defense at the time, saying he was a caring boss with a heavy emphasis on safety. And Mr. Cheema vowed then to turn around the airline "with God's help and my strength and my mom's prayers." His friends said he did just that.
The 'common goal'
For six months, the workers at Spirit of St. Louis Airport had a minor mystery. A Hansa corporate jet sat at one of the public ramps, and nobody had ever seen it flown - or even start up.
"We didn't know who brought it in. It just showed up one day," said Mr. Hrabko, the airport director.
While the plane sat, its owner, Mr. Cheema,
fought to save his firm 400 miles away in
Grand Aire insisted the bank had cut off its funding, and the cash was used for day-to-day operations. The firm also claimed the bank's real motive in the lawsuit was to squeeze more cash out of a firm on the financial rebound.
The bank dropped its lawsuit Monday after Grand Aire restructured its debt with a new financier, Comerica. It was a new beginning for the company, said Jim Hartung, the port authority president and a friend of Mr. Cheema.
"Tahir was quite excited having that behind him and being able to focus his time and effort on the continued business recovery," Mr. Hartung recalled.
The day after the lawsuit was dropped, Mr. Cheema and Mr. Pinardi arrived at the Spirit of St. Louis airport to reclaim the jet that had been sitting there for six months. Mr. Cheema had tried to sell the jet, which had been for his personal use, but a deal had not gone through, and so he left it. Now it would rejoin the fleet.
Surprised airport workers watched Mr. Cheema take the plane in for maintenance that afternoon, and take-off late that evening before the plane quickly disappeared from radar.
A police helicopter discovered the wreckage about three miles south of the airport early yesterday, said Lt. Craig McGuire, of the St. Charles County Sheriff's Department. Emergency workers who reached the crash scene by boat determined there were no survivors. The bodies were identified yesterday morning.
"Conditions down here are really rough, due to high water, fast current, and low visibility, fog, that kind of stuff," Lieutenant McGuire said.
Back in
"Inspired by the passion and the spark exhibited by Tahir, we will keep Grand Aire a
viable business in
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Contact Joe Mahr at:
jmahr@theblade.com
or 419-724-6180.
Troubled airline was in midst of turnaround
By Elisa Crouch
Of the Post-Dispatch
A debris field from the wreckage of a twin engine corporate
jet lies on the eastern shore of
With his co-pilot beside him, the president of a troubled
charter air operation sped his jet down the runway at Spirit of St. Louis
Airport on Tuesday night and began the trip to company headquarters in
He had flown to Lambert Field earlier Tuesday on a
commercial flight, planning to return to
He aborted his first takeoff, then lifted off at
Tahir Cheema,
50, of
The crash was the sixth involving a Grand Aire plane since 2000, and the third that resulted in fatalities.
Last year, Grand Aire suspended
operations for eight days after two plane crashes within hours of each other on
April 8. In the first, a cargo jet crashed short of the
The Federal Aviation Administration has levied hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines against Grand Aire for problems including:
Deficiencies in performing maintenance tasks. The FAA proposed a $95,000 civil penalty in June 2000.
Operating a plane for 20 days without repairing a known problem. The FAA proposed a $95,000 fine in June 2000.
Failing to conduct a required ground and in-flight test after removing and replacing an engine. The agency assessed a $195,000 fine in May 2000.
In 2002, the agency entered into a final settlement agreement with Grand Aire to resolve 12 cases, said Elizabeth Isham Cory, an FAA spokeswoman.
A $48,000 payment on that action came due Wednesday.
Since the settlement two years ago, Cory said, Grand Aire's record has improved.
"The FAA has worked closely with Grand Aire throughout the years, and since the '02 final settlement, we've seen a marked decrease in the need for enforcement activity," she said. "We continue to work with them, as we work with all carriers."
Emergency workers found the wreckage of the plane, a
35-year-old HFB 320 Hansa, about
The investigation into what caused the accident could take months.
Weather may have been a factor. The National Weather Service said light snow was falling and the wind was gusting up to 23 mph at the time of takeoff. Visibility at the airport was nine miles.
The pilot had filed an instrument flight plan and took off with a full supply of fuel, said Richard Hrabko, director of Spirit of St. Louis Airport.
"Not having been flown for a while, that could raise some issues," Hrabko said, although he would not speculate on whether it could have been a factor in the crash.
"Take your car and let it sit for six months, and go start it up and see what happens," he said.
Cheema purchased fuel from JetCorp at the airport about
"We were the last ones to see the plane and pilots before they departed," McCollum said. "They chatted with all the workers and were very courteous."
Cheema came to the
Cheema personally chose Pinardi, who worked for Grand Aire, to fly with him.
Pinardi came to the
"He worked more as a pilot," she said. "But he was very aware of the mechanics of a plane."
Shane Graber and Susan Weich of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.
Reporter Elisa Crouch
E-mail: ecrouch@post-dispatch.com
Phone: 314-340-8119
Jet Company CEO, Pilot Die in
By JIM SUHR
Associated Press Writer
A small charter jet crashed on an island in the
The company had two crashes in less than 24 hours last year.
A police helicopter spotted the wreckage of the twin-engine Hansa 320 jet owned by Grand Aire
Express Inc. early Wednesday, Sheriff's Department Lt. Craig McGuire said. The
plane crashed on
The dead - the only two people aboard the plane - were Grand
Aire president and chief executive Tahir Cheema, 50, of
Grand Aire, which delivers auto parts and other cargo and operates a charter passenger service, said in a statement that Cheema was traveling on personal business, with Pinardi serving as his co-pilot. It said the company "has suffered a terrible loss."
The jet had disappeared from radar shortly after leaving the
airport at about
Airport director Richard Hrabko said workers reported the jet sounded as if it was having trouble during takeoff.
In April last year, the company lost two planes in crashes five hours apart.
One of the 2003 crashes killed three pilots near
Grand Aire grounded its planes voluntarily for nine days after the crashes. The NTSB blamed pilot error for the first accident; the investigation on the other one was pending.
The NTSB was investigating Wednesday's crash. Messages left with the agency were not immediately returned.
Rough weather, including wind gusting to more than 20 mph, hampered the search. When the plane was finally spotted, emergency workers had to go to the scene by boat because high water made the bridge to the island impassable.
"Conditions down here are really rough, due to high water, fast current and low visibility, fog, that kind of stuff," McGuire said.
It's unclear who'll run company after crash kills
chief
By Tim McLaughlin
Of the Post-Dispatch
GRAND AIRE EXPRESS CRASH
With a bank breathing down his
neck, Tahir S. Cheema,
founder of Grand Aire Express Inc., pulled his
charter airline out of financial crisis just days before his plane crashed and
he died with his co-pilot Tuesday night amid light snow in
A native of
"It's too early to say what's going to happen," said Buzz Roberts, a lawyer who helped Cheema restructure his company's heavy debt load. "There's a strong interest in the family to keep the business alive, but right now it's time for reflection and to come to grips with a terrible tragedy that happened to a very nice American family."
Roberts said Cheema's two sons
serve in the military. One is a Marine attached to the American embassy in
Cheema's airline captured national
attention in April last year when two of its planes crashed on the same day.
One aircraft plunged into the
Cheema seemed to thrive in
pressure-cooker situations. In the early days of his airline, when he was the
only pilot, he flew a kidney for transplant from
In 2000, Cheema earned
But in the past year, Grand Aire hit a series of rough patches as it battled the Federal Aviation Administration over its safety record and the business hit a recession.
In late April, Cheema, Grand Aire and other affiliates controlled by Cheema
owed nearly $10 million in principal and interest to National City Bank of
Problems still loomed. Early last month, Cheema hired New Market Partners LLC as crisis consultants. Then National City Bank filed a lawsuit, accusing Cheema and his company of defaulting on a $4 million line of credit. With about $1.7 million still owed, the bank said the note was in default, according to court records obtained by the The Toledo Blade newspaper. The lawsuit in the Lucas County, Ohio, Court of Common Pleas also accused the company of diverting $2 million owed to the bank, court papers show.
The bank demanded that all of the airline's accounts receivable be deposited in a lock box account at National City Bank.
Cheema averted a financial crisis
when he secured Comerica Bank of
Officials at
"The company has been doing extremely well," Roberts said. "It was poised to do even better with the refinancing, then to have this happen."
Reporter Tim McLaughlin
E-mail: tmclaughlin@post-dispatch.com
Phone: 314-340-8206
Article published
Jet bound for Toledo missing in
Plane registered to Grand Aire
FROM BLADE STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS
The plane disappeared from radar after taking off last night
in snowy weather from the Spirit of St. Louis Airport in
The HFB-320 Hansa, built in
"We are looking," she said. "We don't have anymore."
Police at Spirit of St. Louis Airport confirmed that local
authorities were searching for an aircraft with a tail number belonging to the
charter service that is based at
A Grand Aire employee was unable to provide information about the incident.
"I don't know anything about it," a man who would only identify himself as Ed said. "I am sorry. I can't help you."
Teams from
The area is rural and heavily wooded. There were no witnesses, the St. Charles County Sheriff's Office said.
The search was complicated by poor visibility resulting from fog and snow mixed with rain.
Emergency crews called off an air search within two hours because visibility was too bad.
"We went up twice, but [the pilot] had to come back because of sleeting," police Officer John Moonier said. "It is worse the higher up you go."
Emergency crews were continuing the ground search.
Grand Aire has had 10 crashes in
10 years that were serious enough to warrant National Transportation Safety
Board investigations, including two on
One of those crashes occurred while a company plane was on
approach to Toledo Express, killing three pilots who were aboard. Two other
pilots were hurt when their plane, reportedly low on fuel, crashed into the
The NTSB blamed pilot error for the
At its peak, Grand Aire operated
more than two dozen planes, but the 2001 recession hit it hard. On
Article published
Another Grand Aire tragedy
It was a nightmarish end to an American dream. Tahir Cheema, the Pakistani native who came to this country with $40 in his pocket and built a substantial though troubled air cargo business, died Tuesday night doing what he loved: flying.
It was also perhaps the ultimate irony for a company whose significant growth in a competitive field came with a shaky safety record, an outgrowth of other tragedies and other heartbreaks.
Mr. Cheema, founder and president
of Grand Aire, and a co-pilot, Eko
Pinardi, were at the controls of one of the remaining
planes in the company's fleet when it crashed into an island in the
The accident added to a company history already marked by disaster.
The firm's first fatality came when a Grand Aire plane went down in heavy fog in
It was believed to be the only time in the history of commercial aviation that a domestic airline of any size had lost two planes in one day to unrelated accidents not the result of hijackings.
At that point Grand Aire had endured 10 crashes in 10 years, a record of unsafe performance far worse than any of its similar-sized competitors in the air cargo industry.
Many of Grand Aire's planes were
older aircraft. Although a properly maintained older plane is safe, the plane
in which Mr. Cheema and Mr. Pinardi
died was 35 years old and had sat at the
Despite his company's many problems, Mr. Cheema's
story is undeniably an inspirational one. Determined to find success in
He established Grand Aire in 1985
with just one plane, eventually moving from
But bad economic times and the company's alarming safety record ultimately put the firm in serious jeopardy. Now that its founder is gone, Grand Aire's future is bleak indeed.