Greg Biffle signs for fans after winning at Michigan International Speedway in June 2005. Photo: SSG Helen Miller, U.S. Army National Guard, via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)
The headline in the fourth wrongful-death suit over Greg Biffle’s December crash is that he allegedly saved money on a co-pilot. A motive like that is close to impossible to prove from the outside. The sharper question is one the public record already lets us ask: who was sitting in the right seat of an airplane the FAA says needs two pilots?
The estate of Craig Wadsworth, Biffle’s personal assistant, filed suit Oct. 16 in Iredell County, North Carolina. It names the estates of Biffle, pilot Dennis Dutton and his son Jack Dutton, 20, plus GB Aviation Leasing LLC, which the FAA registry lists as the owner of the Cessna 550 involved. The complaint alleges Jack flew without required qualifications “at least in part” to avoid paying a professional co-pilot, and that GB Aviation held no air carrier certificate. These are allegations. None has been tested in court.
What the federal file already says
The NTSB’s investigation WPR26MA063 classifies the Dec. 18, 2025 flight as a Part 91 personal flight in Cessna 550 N257BW out of Statesville Regional Airport. Seven people were killed. In the preliminary report, the left-seat pilot holds an airline transport pilot certificate. The right-seat occupant, described as the pilot’s adult son, holds a private pilot certificate with a single-engine land rating and an instrument rating.
Now stack the rules on top. An FAA letter on the Citation II’s type certificate data sheet says the minimum crew for all types of flight is a pilot and a copilot. Under 14 CFR 61.55, a second-in-command on a jet like that needs at least a private certificate with the appropriate category and class rating, plus type-specific familiarization training and recent experience within the previous 12 months. A twin jet is not a single-engine airplane, and a single-engine land rating is a different class.
That is not a finding. The public portion of the preliminary report does not list the right-seat occupant’s multi-engine privileges, jet training or hours, and the NTSB docket has not been released. A gap on paper is a reason to ask for the training records, not proof they don’t exist.
The motive is the soft spot. The crew is not.
Here is where I think the suit is more interesting than its cost-cutting hook. Part 91 means no air carrier certificate was required for a personal flight, so “no certificate” describes how much private jet flying works rather than a smoking gun. A jury also has to guess at motive, and dead men’s reasons are hard to reconstruct.
Crew qualification is different. It rests on documents: certificates, logbooks, training records, who was designated to fly the right seat. If a two-pilot airplane was dispatched with a second pilot who did not meet 61.55, the owner who chose the crew has a harder story to tell, regardless of why the choice was made. We laid out the ownership side of that fight in our look at who held which job on the airplane, and this suit pushes it from the question of who owned the jet to the question of who was allowed to fly it.
Why the right seat matters in the cockpit
The preliminary report’s timeline shows why a qualified second pilot is more than a paperwork item. After the airplane turned and descended following departure, the pilot said his altitude indicator was not working properly and that other left-side instruments might be affected. Control passed to the right-seat occupant at about 4,500 feet, then appeared to return to the pilot before a left-base turn toward runway 28 and a landing attempt in which the gear indicator lights did not illuminate. The recording ends at roughly 942 feet.
In that sequence, the person in the right seat was not a passenger with a headset. By the NTSB’s own account, he was flying the airplane at points while the captain worked a problem. The preliminary report does not assign a cause, and nothing in it says anyone’s credentials contributed. But it is the stretch of the flight where a lawyer will argue that qualifications are not a technicality.
What to watch next
The NTSB’s eventual docket should include an operations factual report covering certificates, flight experience and training, and that will settle more than any complaint can. Watch also for how the estates answer, and whether the earlier suits get consolidated or amended around the same crew theory. Meanwhile, the story of what investigators found in the days after the crash is in our earlier briefing recap.
Lead image: Greg Biffle signs for fans after winning at Michigan International Speedway in June 2005. Photo: SSG Helen Miller, U.S. Army National Guard, via Wikimedia Commons (public domain).
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