Hi Goldeneaglepilot, You are indeed correct in the fact that we were indeed conned by Rob Weaver, now to clear up the part that you cannot get your head around : As a Ferry company we were given the contract to ferry the Seneca within a set timescale, this timescale didn't fit in with the availability of our usual pilots as we had just 2 weeks to start/finish the ferrying of the Seneca.
Enter Mr Rob Weaver...... Rob Weaver was known to us by him having professed to having so much work in previous months that he offered us subcontracted work ( strangely none ever materialised, which seems to be a story that others have also had from good old RW ) With an understanding that we would trade off work during each others lean periods we offered Rob Weaver the Seneca ferry flight as it would get the job completed and our company would have satisfied a contract and Rob Weaver would get a payday and a customer would get their Seneca delivered. The requirements for Rob Weaver to do the ferrying looked to all be in order so he was offered the job, now in hindsight it is obvious that his qualifications/experience were fictional.
Whilst we believed RW to have the qualifications and a cursory look on the FAA Database was made, it would seem that yes there was a misinterpreted view on his qualifications ( misinterpreted by the insurers and by ourselves ) RW has also completed IR training for Twin Rated pilots who have been caught by the same erroneous documents that we were shown. Had a very detailed correlation of his documentation against the FAA Database been made it would have shown the discrepancy ( by that we mean a physical phone call to the FAA Airman dept )
A few days before RW departed to collect the Seneca we were asked if we minded if he took a 'friend' along for the experience, we made it 100% clear that the clients insurance was for Rob Weaver to be P1 at all times and that we were not financing the expenses of the 'friend'. RW accepted that we as a company were not responsible for his 'friends' expenses and that he would be solely there to learn the ropes. As far as we know the client's insurance didn't cover both pilots, only RW. We were in the aftermath glad that the 'friend' was there to reduce the chances of a total write off and save 2 lives in the process. I strongly believe the 'friend' was as deceived as we were in as much as he didn't realise he was P1 until the doo doo hit the fan.
As you are sitting on the fence on certain aspects I would tend to agree that we were guilty of not having used due diligence ( or at the very least being too trusting of RW ) At no time would we conspire with Rob Weaver and that is something that we would defend to the end, we would and will still remain outside of thethread loop with regards to the Seneca accident, the whole accident saga was allegedly dealt with by Rob Weaver and we were left with having to sort out the legal side of it all ( a very expensive matter ).
As you say the accident has happened and at the time we were pleased to know that there wasn't any fatalities and our primary objective was to repatriate RW to the UK,we would hope that our honesty and integrity is not in question in this matter, as whilst we tried to say little as we didn't want to be drawn into a public forum on a subject that in our opinion could only damage our company more than it already has. We have taken time to discuss this accident with the likes of Debiassi & Jetblu as they seemed to be the prime movers in the majority of the thread content on Mr Rob Weaver. We should make it very clear that RW had concluded any chance he would have had of getting any more ferrying out of our company by the irregularities that came out of the Seneca accident, these irregularities didn't highlight RW's lack of qualifications at the time... what it did highlight was that he wasn't P1 at the time of the accident and that was where our company had to focus on and deal with that point.
We think our Statement and indeed this response should be looked upon as us being open & honest in what went on in terms of how we as a company believed the ferry flight was being performed on our behalf.
Forums are bulletin boards and not the ideal way to compose responses which is why we have spoken with Debiassi & Jetblu by telephone to have a more concise and personal approach to the details.
Truth Prevails.