Who can be responsible to an injured party when an aircraft crashes? This is one of the questions that we deal with when first investigating an aircraft crash, and there can be a number of responsible parties.
Sometimes there can be air traffic control involvement, so if there is weather that a pilot is not aware of and somehow inadvertently gets vectored into a thunderstorm, that may be a case against the air traffic control. Also, there can be cases against the product manufacturer of different components of the aircraft. We can have cases sometimes against the manufacturer of component parts. For example, in a helicopter a rotator blade that fails in flight or an engine that fails, those two can also be avenues for recovery for the injured party.
Then there’s the pilot, and the pilot typically is always someone that is scrutinized from a legal perspective because they are in charge of the aircraft. When you look at all three of those, each one can be a responsible party in an aircraft crash.