Whatever
Happened To...
An update on past news
Flight school that taught
teen faces a lawsuit
over his deathQuestion: What ever happened to the flight school where Mililani High School senior Chezray Hayes was taking flying lessons when he crashed last year?
Answer: The parents of a Mililani teen who crashed and died while flying his first solo crossing from Honolulu to Maui nearly a year ago are suing the flight school where he took lessons.
George Hanzawa, owner of George's Aviation Services, and Jennifer Oka, a flight instructor, are named as defendants in a wrongful-death lawsuit filed Wednesday in Circuit Court by Mitchell and Natalie Hayes, parents of Chezray Hayes.
Hayes, 17, a senior at Mililani High School, had accumulated 34 hours of flight time and was taking lessons for his pilot's license. He was behind the controls of a single-engine Cessna 172 just after noon on Jan. 25 when he made his last radio contact and was never heard from again. The wreckage was spotted two days later on a mountain ridge in northeastern Molokai.
A preliminary report by the National Transportation Safety Board indicated Hayes was flying too low over the northern shore of Molokai. He was authorized to fly using visual light rules.
According to the suit, the route outlined by Oka and approved by Hanzawa and others was "unsuitable for Chezray to fly given his lack of experience and instrument rating."
Many other experienced pilots had canceled flights along a similar route at the time of Hayes' flight because of unfavorable weather conditions, and only pilots with instrument rating should have been flying along that route, the suit said.
Hanzawa said he had not seen the lawsuit but is saddened to hear the parents are suing.
"I can understand their grief but we're grieving, too," he said. The sad part, he said, is that the lawsuit only opens up wounds that Chezray's family, friends and everyone in the aviation community were hoping to heal.
"Chezray was not only our student, but our friend -- he was a really, really nice kid," Hanzawa said.
The parents are seeking an unspecified amount of damages to be proved at trial. Chezray was the eldest of the Hayeses' three children.
Star-Bulletin reporter Debra Barayuga wrote this update.
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