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GREAT FALLS - The company that runs a medical airplane service is to blame for a crash near Belgrade last year that killed all three crewmembers aboard, according to a civil lawsuit filed by the father of one of the victims.

Richard Dengel, the father of 27-year-old flight nurse Darcy Dengel, filed the lawsuit Monday against Metro Aviation Inc., which runs Benefis Healthcare's Mercy Flight service. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages and claims that Metro Aviation endangered flight crews by using only one pilot, rather than the two that were previously used. It also says the company failed to adequately train its employees on the use of safety equipment.

The estate of Vince Kirol, the pilot on the flight and an employee of Metro Aviation, also is named as a defendant in the lawsuit.

Richard Dengel's attorney, Gregory Pinski, said Kirol's estate was named so the case would remain in Cascade County, and is not an effort to collect money from Kirol's relatives. Had the estate not been named as a defendant, the case might have played out somewhere else in the state, Pinski said.

"That's a difficult legal issue that weighs heavily on the (Dengel) family," Pinski said. "They did not want to put the Kirol family through that."

Charles Lucero, an attorney listed on the lawsuit as the representative of Kirol's estate, did not return calls to his office Tuesday afternoon.

The Feb. 6, 2007 crash killed the 59-year-old Kirol, 33-year-old paramedic Paul Erickson and Darcy Dengel.

A report released in January by the National Transportation Safety Board said Kirol failed to maintain an adequate altitude and descent rate during a night visual approach to Gallatin Field Airport. The report said darkness and mountainous terrain also were factors.

The Great Falls-based Beech 200 crashed into a mountain about 80 feet below the peak of a ridge that rose to an elevation of about 5,700 feet, according to the report.

A spokesman for Metro Aviation declined to comment until company administrators have time to review the lawsuit.

Metro Aviation, based in Shreveport, La., contracts with Benefis and several other hospitals across the country to provide emergency air transport.

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