Instructor’s Use Of Multiple Central Nervous System Depressants A Contributing Factor The 68-year-old certified flight instructor who was among the three people killed in a January 2024 plane crash in western Massachusetts tested positive for two medications that are listed on the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) “Do not issue, do not fly” list, according to the National Transportation Safety Board’s (NTSB) findings. An aircraft performance study conducted by the NTSB Office of Research and Engineering said, “The National Transportation Safety Board determines the probable cause(s) of this accident to be: The flight instructor’s failure to maintain airplane control during a stall, which resulted in an inadvertent spin from which the airplane was not recovered. Contributing to the accident were the overall effect of the flight instructor’s use of multiple central nervous system depressants, the associated underlying conditions they treated, or both.”
