BP oil spill incident commander dies in small plane crash 24 Nov 2010 Jim Black, a BP incident commander for the company's Gulf of Mexico oil spill response team, died in a small plane crash near Destin, Fla., on Tuesday night, the company confirmed. The Coast Guard said the small plane crashed Tuesday about 7:30 p.m. in Choctawhatchee Bay. Black, whose job at the oil giant was director of operations for the Gulf Coast Restoration Organization, spent a lot of his time during the past several months in and around New Orleans.