Wrongful-death suit over 2017 training flight crash settled

NEW HAVEN — The sister of a student pilot who died in a small plane crash in Connecticut in 2017 has settled a wrongful-death lawsuit against the flight school she accused of failing to maintain the aircraft.

Terms of the settlement over the death of Pablo Campos-Isona during a training flight crash in East Haven have not been disclosed. The agreement with the now-defunct American Flight Academy was revealed in a document filed Monday in state Superior Court in New Haven by the attorney for CamposIsona’s sister, Marie Matta-Isona.

Messages seeking comment were left for lawyers in the case Wednesday.

Campos-Isona, 31, died after a Piper PA38 crashed while he and instructor Rafayel Hany Wassef were practicing touch-and-go landings near Tweed New Haven Airport on Feb. 22, 2017. Wassef survived but suffered multiple broken bones.

American Flight Academy and its owner, Arian Prevalla, denied the lawsuit’s allegations and, in court documents, blamed Campos-Isona for the crash.

Federal investigators concluded a fuel selector valve failure likely caused the plane’s engine to stall and placed some blame on Wassef.

American Flight Academy also was sued over a 2016 fatal training flight crash in East Hartford, but a judge dismissed the lawsuit in 2019. In that case, Prevalla, who survived the crash, accused student Feras Freitekh, who died, of intentionally causing the crash, which Freitekh’s family denied.