Piper Malibu

On May 1, 2019, a Piper PA-46-350P Malibu departed Goose Bay airport (CYYR) in Labrador bound for Narsarsuaq airport (BGBW) in Greenland. The flight departed on a VFR flight plan, planning to fly below adverse weather and wind conditions at an altitude of 2,000 feet asl before climbing to higher altitudes and air-filing an IFR flight plan for the remainder of the journey. However, the experienced and professional ferry pilot flew the Malibu into a 2,250-foot hill just before reaching the Atlantic Ocean, striking the hillside at about 200 feet below its summit. The pilot survived, but his passenger was killed.

The Transportation Safety Board (TSB) classifies this as a Controlled Flight Into Terrain (CFIT) accident. Read the full report and its recommendations in the first PDF appended below.

Coyote Ultralight

Another CFIT fatal accident occurred on July 1, 2019 when a Rans S-6ES Coyote advanced ultralight aircraft collided with terrain in Rougemont, Quebec. The aircraft had been circling at an altitude less than 200 feet agl, just above the treetops, then veered off in the opposite direction before colliding with trees.

Read the full report and its recommendations in the second PDF appended below.

Colibri Helicopter

A student pilot taking lessons from a free-lance instructor took off from Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec for Mirabel in his Eurocopter EC120 Colibri for his first solo cross-country flight. The pilot lost his life when he crashed near Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts in another CFIT accident. In the TSB investigation report, poor weather and inadequate supervision are cited as factors contributing to the accident.

Read the full report and its recommendations in the third PDF appended below.

Ottawa Aviation Services (OAS) closed suddenly last month, leaving many students and staff members in a lurch. Flight instructors have gone unpaid and students have not received training they already paid for. About 125 students were enrolled in the school, with about 40 percent being foreign.

Transport Canada-Civil Aviation cancelled OAS’s operating certificate on December 17, citing its failure to appoint required senior safety personnel within its organization. This came only days after Ontario’s superintendent of Private Career Colleges pulled their accreditation on December 12 after an investigation.

One of OAS’s flight instructors, John Richardson, told the Ottawa Sun that he is owed between $25,000 and $30,000 in wages and expenses. He said he began to suspect something was wrong. “Not getting paid was a key indicator. The reason we stayed without being paid was to see how far we could advance the students and minimize the damage they had already incurred.” Many of the other instructors had already left the company.

Students had been promised they would be receiving five training flights a week, but some were receiving one or two lessons a week, despite being charged $5,300 per month.  Others only got to fly two or three times a month. Many foreign students, most of them Chinese, had prepaid U$120,000 for the training program that they ended up not receiving.

OAS is owned and operated by Cedric Paillard, who formerly worked in the tech sector in Ottawa. According to his LinkedIn profile, Paillard also worked for the Air Transport Association of Canada for a period of time in 2010 as their Vice-President for Communications and Marketing.

Paillard states that the closure is only temporary, and that he is restructuring the company. The OAS website and Facebook page are still up with no mention of any troubles.

Photo credit: Facebook

By Phil Lightstone

The move to an all-glass cockpit for aircraft with legacy ‘steam gauges’ is one step closer thanks to Garmin’s recent announcement of their newest product, the GI 275. The GI 275 is a 3.125-inch instrument designed to replace many instruments in the six-pack. The GI 275 is a STC’d and TSO’d multifunction computer delivering edge-to-edge glass, a touch screen, a push-button interface and Wi-Fi/Bluetooth connectivity.

As a platform for aircraft instrumentation, there is a tremendous amount of functionality embedded into the instrument lineup. The GI 275 has five models, delivering various capabilities driven by technologies in the aircraft including GNC/GNS/GTN navigators, Sirius XM weather receiver, autopilots, radar altimeter, a variety of engine probes, fuel transceivers and selected ADS-B IN receivers.

With dual GI 275 displays as the primary flight instrumentation, reversionary backup capability retains attitude and heading data on the remaining HSI or MFD if an instrument failure occurs. Wireless capability allows data from the GI 275 to be streamed to a smart device. The attitude indicator supports an optional on-board battery, designed to provide flight information during an electrical system failure. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

The GI 275 is purchased for either Class 1 & 2 aircraft (piston aircraft below 6,000 lbs) or Class 3 aircraft (piston or turbine aircraft weighing between 6,000 lbs and 12,500 lbs). Available versions and their prices for Class 1 & 2 aircraft are: an attitude indicator (U$3,995), an HSI (U$4,295), a CDI (U$3,195), an MFD (U$3,195) and an EIS (U$5,295). Pricing does not include labour or any additional components, such as cabling, interface modules, etc.

The pilot may control the GI 275 either through the touch screen or a traditional knob, making it very pilot-friendly. Database updating is performed using Garmin Pilot or other technologies supporting GSB 15. As compared to ‘full glass’, such as a G500 TXi, retrofitting a ‘steam gauge’ aircraft should be simpler and more cost effective, allowing for a gradual retrofit rather than a big-bang approach. Check out Garmin’s website for more detailed information.

It was on July 26 in 1944 that an RCAF Halifax bomber, returning from a bombing run over Stuttgart, Germany, crashed in the woods near Thorey-en-Plaine, a small French village in the countryside about 13 kilometres southwest of Dijon. Of the six Canadians and one Brit on board, all perished but for one of the Canadians.

Fast forward 75 years and the village council has approached the City of Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, wishing to be twinned with it, citing the fact that one of the victims, Gunner James Reginald Giles, was from Prince Albert.

“This sad event, therefore, links both our villages together,” the Village wrote in an email that was sent to the Prince Albert’s city council. “We, the people of Thorey-en-Plaine, will always remember the soldiers who died that day.”

The Village has already honoured the memory of the six victims, holding a ceremony on the 70^th anniversary of the crash in 2014. Four years later, another ceremony was held to unveil a monument at the scene of the crash. The lone survivor of the incident, Flight Officer G.R. Ellis, survived by bailing out and parachuting to the ground. He was taken prisoner by the German occupiers of France at the time and imprisoned for the remainder of the war.

The citizens of Thorey-en-Plaine recovered the bodies of the victims and they were buried in the cemetery of a nearby village. “The graves of your Canadian heroes are also well looked after,” the Villagers said in their email.

Photo credits: LBP/Chantal Malatesta, Le Village de Thorey-en-Plaine

As a second airplane slides off the end of a runway at Halifax airport (CYHZ) in the span of 14 months, questions are being asked why Transport Canada-Civil Aviation has not been heeding the call by the Transportation Safety Board (TSB) to comply with its recommendation to provide a longer overrun area for Code 4 runways (greater than 1800 metres (5905 feet) in length.

At around noon on January 5, a WestJet Boeing 737-800 with 172 passengers on board slid 50 metres (164 feet) off the end of a runway after what the airlines said appeared to be a normal landing in snowy conditions. This follows a similar incident in November of 2018 when a Sky Lease Cargo Boeing 747-400F cargo jet overran Runway 14 by 210 metres (689 feet) at the same airport. That incident resulted with the aircraft being written off due to extensive damage.

It was the crash-landing of an Air France Airbus A340-313 at Toronto’s Pearson airport in 2005 that led to the TSB recommendation. In the Air France incident, the aircraft overran the runway while landing in a storm and ended up in a ravine and catching fire. All passengers and crew survived, some with minor injuries. The TSB recommendation, A07-06, reads, “[The Board recommended that] the Department of Transport require all Code 4 runways to have a 300 m runway end safety area (RESA) or a means of stopping aircraft that provides an equivalent level of safety.”

According to the TSB, Canada is lagging other nations in implementing suitable RESAs. Current TCCA regulations call for overrun areas of 60 metres (197 feet) and recommends there be an additional 90 metres (295 feet) for a total of 150 metres (492 feet). At the Halifax airport, all overrun areas are only 150 metres in length.

Canadian airports that have voluntarily implemented the TSB-recommended RESA of 300 metres include Ottawa International (CYOW), Montreal-Trudeau International (CYUL) and Vancouver International (CYVR).

Photo by Ryan Taplin/The Chronicle Herald