Ellsworth Fortman crash: A timeline of how the LAFD official dodged discipline
What we know about the fatal crash at Ellsworth City-Ellsworth Airport in December 2018
Ellsworth City-Ellsworth Airport is a small but bustling airport. Its primary function is to serve planes headed for Seattle or Boeing Field in nearby Burien. On Tuesday, December 26, 2018, that meant the arrival of a JetBlue flight from JFK Airport, which was en route to Seattle. According to the NTSB, the plane was flying on visual flight rules when it made a sudden left turn across the taxiway and into a ditch. Fourteen of the 18 passengers on board died.
The accident happened about 1:30 p.m. at the end of the day, when the airport was busy. The L.A. Department of Transportation’s flight control tower directed flights to divert to Burbank (south of Burbank), which is about a mile away and connected to LAX by the 210 freeway. But the flight was diverted anyway, and the plane that was sent to Burbank was never seen again.
There was no emergency evacuation of the airport. There was, however, a coordinated flight departure that would have taken the two planes to and from the airport around the same time.
The L.A. Department of Transportation’s pilot error report said the pilot of the jetliner had failed to see that the runway was in fact full and that he had a clear path to the taxiway. The report also said an L.A. airport traffic controller had directed the pilot to divert to Burbank to clear the runway and fly the plane as far as possible. The traffic controller that told the pilot to divert to Burbank is named in the report by the name of Ellsworth City-Ellsworth Airport employee John Legg, who also worked at the airport. In October, Legg was placed on leave following complaints that he and his co-workers were repeatedly rude to passengers.
The L.A. Department of Homeland Security’s official report regarding the crash is different from the NTSB’s. Instead, it says that the captain of the JetBlue flight was “cognizant of weather
