Retired Partner, Head, National Aviation Industry Team and the New York Litigation Group, Holland & Knight LLP Law Firm
B.S. ASE 1964, The University of Texas at Austin
J.D. 1968, Georgetown University Law Center
Bob Craft’s 52-year legal career was devoted primarily to aviation, product-liability, mass-disaster and insurance matters. He additionally served as general counsel (on a pro-bona basis) to AIAA, The Wings Club and New York City Ballet. He was also a board member of The Wings Club and New York City Ballet.
At UT Austin, Craft was on the Student Engineering Council and was one of two Cockrell School of Engineering School representatives in the Student Assembly. His other activities included the Faculty-Student Cabinet, the varsity debate team, the Presidency of the Oratorical Association, and the Student Leader exchange with the University of Chile. Following graduation, Craft worked at General Dynamics and then attended Georgetown, where he was named the law school's Outstanding Advocate. He then joined the New York City aviation/maritime law firm Haight, Gardner, Poor & Havens, which merged with Holland & Knight in 1997.
Craft was the lead U.S. lawyer for airlines and manufacturers in many major air-crash litigations and investigations, including the TWA Flight 800 8747 explosion near Long Island, the American DC-10 crash in Chicago, the United DC-1 O crash at Sioux City, the Turkish Airlines 8737 crash in Amsterdam, the UPS 8747 crash in Dubai, the Air France Concorde crash in Paris, and (as co-lead) the collision of Pan American and KLM 8747s at Tenerife,. He also handled many cases involving military, corporate and general-aviation crashes. His appellate cases included representation of the International Air Transport Association as an amicus in two U.S. Supreme Court cases.
Craft's speeches and publications on aviation and other topics amount to over a hundred. His articles have appeared in the Journal of Air Law and Commerce, the Journal of Space Law, the National Law Journal, The New York Times and various bar-association and foreign publications. Notably, because of his extensive experience, the NTSB invited him to make presentations and to participate in NTSB programs. In 2015 Craft was given the rare privilege of presenting the Spring Lecture at New York State's highest court.
He is particularly proud of having been one of the four founders and the second Chairman of The Lawyers Alliance for New York, the nation's leading pro-bono provider of business and transactional legal advice for nonprofit organizations.
Craft's hometown was Garland, Texas. He now lives in Brooklyn, NY, with his wife Irene Tichenor, a printing historian.
