Sonicblue TSB Report to be Released

[Widow]

I'm supposed to be surprised TSB got something "wrong"?

[ahramin]

A post-accident evaluation determined that there were no terrain risks between the aircraft and the airport when the engine failed. The pilot did not know this because the ground was obscured by cloud. Had the aircraft been equipped with a serviceable TAWS, it would have informed the pilot that there were no terrain risks between the point of the engine failure and his intended emergency landing field. With this information, he may have continued with his original plan to fly directly to the Port Alberni Regional Airport rather than descending into a mountainous region to maintain visual reference with the ground.

Is it just me or is the tsb talking out of their derriere here? I have flown many aircraft with TAWS and not a single one would show whether a glide to an airport would be clear of terrain or not. Has anyone flown an aircraft which has a TAWS system that would do this?

[ahramin]

From the report:

TC first permitted SEIFR operations in Canada in 1993.

It's to bad the report itself doesn't have the facts correct.

I did my first single engine ifr ppc in september of 1989, with a TC inspector on board. I was flying the line on a 208, IFR every day, less than a week after that ride. The operation was very definitely approved by TC, had inspectors around quite regularily.

Beware the 'facts' you quote, because they are quite often very inconveniently incorrect.

Was this with passengers? I think they are talking about SEIFR with passengers.

[Widow]

Yeah, with pax. Two lost with the pilot. Five survived.

[safetywatch]

In case anyone wants the report it is available at:
http://www.cbc.ca/bc/news/bc-080115-tsb-report.pdf

Transport Canada will require the installation and use of terrain awareness warning systems in single-engine aircraft that fly over mountainous terrain.


Technicians from the Transportation Safety Board examined the Cessna's wreckage.
(CBC)
In a report released Tuesday, the Transportation Safety Board concluded that a plane crash on Vancouver Island on Jan. 21, 2006, was due to a broken engine part. The pilot and two of seven passengers died in the crash.

The Sonicblue Airways plane left Tofino, on the island's west coast, for a flight to Vancouver on a cloudy afternoon, the report says.

As it climbed over the mountains the single-engine Cessna 208B Caravan lost power following a fatigue-generated crack in the engine, it says.

There was no terrain risk between the aircraft and the destination airport when the engine failed but the pilot didn't know he had enough momentum to glide safely to the ground because of cloudy conditions, the report says.


The single-engine craft was carrying eight people when it slammed into a logging road near Port Alberni, B.C., in 2006.
(CBC)
The plane needed a terrain awareness warning system, said Bill Yearwood, an investigator with the TSB.

"If [the pilot] was able to identify where the high terrain was, he would have been aware that his track would have taken him there without hitting the mountains around him," Yearwood said.

The pilot wanted to make an emergency landing at nearby Port Alberni but with visibility poor, he ended up in a mountainous area and crashed on a snowy hillside while trying to land on a logging road.

Transport Canada has accepted the board's recommendation so a terrain awareness warning system will become mandatory in small single-engine planes flying over mountains.

But spokesman Rod Nelson said the proposed new rule faces a lengthy consultation period. Once it is accepted, the rule would apply immediately to new aircraft but operators of existing planes would have two years to comply.

Pilot family to sue
The TSB report also says regulators did not take into account all possible problems that could knock a plane with only one engine out of the sky when allowing the Cessna 208B Caravan to fly over mountainous terrain.

Considering all possible failures such as a failed fuel pump, the loss of oil pressure or improper maintenance, the plane didn't meet minimum reliability standards to fly, the report says.

"The way reliability was tracked was not what we think the best method," Yearwood said.

Jonathan Huggett, the father of the pilot, said Tuesday he's going to sue Transport Canada over the crash.

"Transport Canada has failed the public in the most fundamental, miserable way," Huggett told CBC News.

"It directly caused the death of my son. For that, we're going to hold them accountable no matter what it takes."

Huggett noted the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has already made the terrain awareness warning equipment a precondition for single-engine commercial flights through mountainous terrain.

"So how come we take a different view and take 10 years to implement it?" he asked.

With files from the Canadian Press

[the_professor]

Ah, so the big bad regulator is to blame and now we can all breathe a sigh of relief.

First of all, to suggest the PT6 is not reliable enough for SEIFR operations is a crock of shit.

Second, why hasn't the TSB uncovered this "fact" during previous Caravan investigations? There have been several in the last couple of years.

And TAWS would have saved the day? I doubt it.

A bad blade caused this accident. Not TC, not the TSB, and not the absence of TAWS.

[Chuck Ellsworth]

First of all, to suggest the PT6 is not reliable enough for SEIFR operations is a crock of @#$!.

If that pilot had been flying a twin on that flight would he have crashed?

[Widow]

Sounds to me like a whole series of LINKS in the CHAIN OF EVENTS could have prevented this accident from either taking place at all, or from being fatal. Huh, sounds like AQW.

Anyone remember this story?

Former Sonicblue pilot says planes were 'atrocious'
Sonicblue accused of falling short on safety as probe of fatal Island crash gets underway
Lora Grindlay, CanWest News Service
Published: Wednesday, January 25, 2006

A former pilot for Sonicblue Airways accused the company of not making safety a priority as the Transportation Safety Board investigated a plane crash near Port Alberni that killed three people on Saturday.

Shaun Crowe-Swords, 30, who now works for a Calgary-based corporate carrier, said Tuesday the planes he flew during the three years he worked for Sonicblue were in "atrocious" shape.

He says he quit the B.C. airline because safety did not appear to be a priority.

The plane that crashed Saturday was owned by International Express Aircharter Ltd., which operates as Sonicblue Airways and Regency Express Flight Operations.

"One of my last flights with them, I was flying a Piper Navajo, a small twin engine airplane that they operate," said Crowe-Swords from Las Vegas where he was working Tuesday.

"I was going to Port Alberni, I was flying the Canadian Coast Guard up there on a charter and the right engine had such a bad oil leak. The oil was leaking out onto the cowling and actually smoking."

The Transportation Safety Board said Tuesday that the plane that crashed on the weekend likely didn't run out of gas.

Regional manager Bill Yearwood said investigators have obtained documents showing the pilot took on sufficient fuel for the flight from Tofino to Vancouver.

The Cessna 208 Caravan also spilled fuel at the crash site, Yearwood said.

"So fuel exhaustion is not suspected at this time," he said.

Yearwood said investigators will examine the wreckage to see if anything blocked the flow of fuel to the engine, or whether something else may have caused the plane's engine to lose power.

The board said earlier that the damage to the plane suggested the propeller wasn't turning on impact, indicating a power failure.

Pilot Edward Huggett's request to make a "dead stick" landing at the Port Alberni airport also suggests the engine had stopped.

The plane never made it to the airport and crashed on a hill near the town Saturday, killing three people, including Huggett, Terry Douglas, 58, of St. Albert, Alta., and three-year-old boy Braeden Hale of Tofino. Braeden's 17-month-old sister, MacKenzie, and 37-year-old mother, Marnie Helliwell, were injured in the crash, along with three other women, including Douglas's wife, Jill.

Sonicblue Airways operations manager Nikolas Chapman responded to allegations by saying his company runs a safe operation.

Company owner Ranjit Gill of Surrey couldn't be reached for comment.

Transport Canada suspended International Express Aircharter's air operator certificate on Monday.

Crowe-Swords said current and former employees have long discussed maintenance problems at the company.

"You get on an airline, you think it's going to be regulated and safe . . . this accident was just a ticking time bomb. When I quit there, I quit because I [feared] that they would kill somebody."

Manitoba's Justin Peterson, 25, laid a complaint last year with Federal Labour Program. Peterson said he worked as a co-pilot for the company but never got paid.

"They tell you you are part of an airline transition program and if you want to build time you can act as a co-pilot on their planes," said Peterson Tuesday.

But before flying with the company you have to pay $5,000 to the company as a training fee, said Peterson.

"They were trying to call it training but meanwhile you are flying passengers around the province and they weren't paying anything," said Peterson.

An official with the Labour Program investigated his claims and determined that the company was in contravention of Canada's Labour Code. It was found that Peterson was an employee and was entitled to a wage.

Peterson, who is now a captain with Manitoba Air Ambulance, was eventually paid almost $5,000 for back wages and the company changed its policy.

He also had concerns about the company's maintenance and said they rely heavily on apprentice aircraft mechanics.

Peterson, who was friends with Huggett, phoned Transport Canada numerous times to report infractions.

"We've had gear failures, to flap failures, to turbo charger failures in engines. This is all while in flight. I've had to return to Vancouver on more than one occasion," he said.

[Widow]

... or this one?

Flight 604: Engine failure at 9,000 feet
Collision course Part 2 A compressor wheel blade snapping off was catastrophic for the one-engine plane flying more than 300 km/h. With no power, it would eventually fall out of the sky.
Fred Vallance-Jones, Robert Cribb and Tamsin Mcmahon; Fred Vallance-Jones, Robert Cribb, Tamsin McMahon
(Jun 5, 2006)
COLLISION course

The weather was a mild seven degrees when Stacey Curtis and Marissa Richmond arrived at the Tofino airport on Vancouver Island's west coast in January. The Toronto couple had just spent a relaxing week at a rented beach house, visiting the rain forest and gardens of the popular tourist community.

On previous trips to Tofino, the pair had taken a ferry from mainland British Columbia and driven four hours from Nanaimo. Curtis normally avoided small planes at all costs. Even in her job as a director, working on some of Canada's best-known TV shows, like Street Legal, North of 60 and Road to Avonlea, she refused to go up in helicopters for shots.

But this was a short vacation and the 45-minute plane ride would save time. Before they left Toronto, Curtis had scanned the website of the airline that was to fly them from Vancouver to Tofino. Sonicblue Airways showed a twin-engine Beechcraft King Air. "It has two engines," Curtis thought. "We'll be okay."

Company pilots later said they joked about the photo because although the airline listed the King Air as part of its fleet, Sonicblue didn't actually own one.

So Curtis was surprised when she arrived at Vancouver airport on Jan. 14 to find a single-engine Cessna Caravan waiting.

At the time, Sonicblue was one of almost 600 small airlines flying close to 3,000 planes that form Canada's air taxi fleet, which makes up more than half the commercial aviation industry. By definition, air taxis carry fewer than 10 people -- generally on short-hop or charter flights -- and also ferry cargo and act as air ambulances. Air taxis carry more than 100,000 passengers a year in Canada.

A joint investigation by The Hamilton Spectator, Toronto Star and The Record of Waterloo Region shows Transport Canada regulations are lax when it comes to air taxi operations, which regularly account for the majority of accidents and fatalities in the commercial industry.

B.C.'s air taxi industry, with Canada's largest fleet of planes, has had an especially difficult time, suffering six fatal crashes killing 14 people in the past 13 months.

Three of the province's air taxi companies have been shut down. One of them -- with six fines or suspensions and three fatal crashes in the last eight years -- was Sonicblue.

Despite Curtis's initial misgivings about the single-engine Sonicblue plane, the flight to the island had been uneventful -- beautiful even. By the time Curtis arrived back at Tofino airport at 1 p.m. on Jan. 21, she was more concerned about making her WestJet connection back to Toronto.

The plane's captain, Ed Huggett, reassured Curtis that the flight was 15 minutes early, leaving plenty of time to catch her next plane.

Curtis remembered Huggett from the flight a week earlier. At 25, he was young and fresh-faced. But he also had a serious, matter-of-fact quality and had spent a lot of time weighing luggage and making sure a U.S. couple with too many bags paid their overages.

Already waiting in the airport were two other Sonicblue passengers: Jill and Terry Douglas, a couple from St. Albert, a suburb of Edmonton.

A few minutes later, Tofino's Jeff Hale pulled up to drop off his wife, Marnie Helliwell, and their two children, three-year-old Braeden and 17-month-old MacKenzie.

The sound of the children's voices scared Curtis's small white West Highland terrier, Emma, who jumped inside her travelling crate.

The group piled into the nine-seater: the Douglases in the first row, Helliwell and the two children in the middle, and Curtis and Richmond in the back.

Huggett fired up the engine, the roar making it difficult for passengers to hear each other. The plane sat on the runway for nearly 15 minutes as Huggett filled out paperwork.

Despite the assurance that they were ahead of schedule, Sonicblue flight 604 left eight minutes late at 1:53 p.m. For 15 minutes the Caravan soared to 9,000 feet above forests and mountains toward a growing layer of cloud on its way to Vancouver.

Curtis remembers she was looking out the window when she heard it: A loud clunk followed by complete silence. She turned her gaze to the front of the plane, wondering if maybe they had hit a bird. Instead she saw the Caravan's lone propeller slowing to a stop.

Despite his young age, Huggett was one of Sonicblue Airways' most senior pilots. In three years with the Vancouver-based airline, Huggett had worked his way from an unpaid first officer to a captain with more than 2,500 flying hours, many on the company's flagship Cessna Caravan.

The baby of an affluent family in suburban Vancouver, Huggett hadn't followed his two brothers into academia. After unsuccessfully prodding their youngest son toward trade school, Huggett's parents offered to buy him flying lessons at nearby Langley Flying School for his 17th birthday.

In the cockpit, Huggett was transformed from a shy, unfocused kid into a confident, ambitious young man who dreamed of one day flying business jets.

"It was almost the making of him," said his father, Jonathan Huggett. But Ed Huggett found there were few flying jobs for new, untested pilots. He took work on a ramp, emptying toilets and unloading baggage until he heard about pilot openings at Sonicblue, then called Regency Express.

The company offered an "airline transition" plan that required Huggett to pay nearly $5,000 in training fees and work for free. But he'd be able to fly planes widely used in the industry.

While he eventually began making money, his family and friends said Huggett's opinion of his employer soured as his list of safety concerns grew. He complained to his father that his plane had blown a tire landing in Kamloops. Huggett told his father the company instructed him to inflate the tire and fly the plane back to Vancouver to be fixed. When he refused -- worried a flat tire was a sign of more serious damage -- he told his father the company asked him to fix it himself, even though he wasn't an approved mechanic.

Huggett was so vocal that fellow pilots elected him as their representative on the company safety committee. But around Christmas, the young pilot's attitude changed. He was no longer just concerned about safety, he was scared, his father recalls.

"There's no question the last two or three months Ed seemed to know something was going to happen," Jonathan Huggett, said. "He was getting worried and I hadn't seen him worried before."

Huggett confided to a friend that if problems at the airline weren't fixed, he felt someone was going to die. He talked to a co-worker about leasing a plane and going into business against Sonicblue. He had scheduled a job interview with an Ontario airline.

It was set for three days after flight 604 back to Vancouver from Tofino.

In Vancouver control centre, Jeff Dawson listened as his colleague talked to Sonicblue flight 604.

"You hear the guy say he's lost an engine," Dawson said. "Well, big deal, he's got another one. Then all of a sudden (you realize) no he doesn't. And then it dawned on everybody the severity of what those guys were in to."

Ablade in the Cessna's turbine engine compressor wheel had snapped off as the plane cruised at 9,000 feet. The blade either tore through other blades or set the compressor wheel off balance, causing it to break apart. The engine failed at 2:08 p.m.

The failure was catastrophic for a one-engine plane flying more than 300 km/h. With no power, it would eventually fall out of the sky. For 10 minutes the plane glided toward the ground.

In the cockpit, Huggett was talking into his headset, planning to head for Port Alberni airport 30 kilometres away. He told the passengers to buckle up.

It was eerily quiet inside the Caravan. Curtis remembers seeing Jill Douglas turn to her husband and Helliwell talking to her children to keep them calm.

No one cried out. No one panicked. "I knew we were in serious, serious, serious trouble," Curtis said. "I didn't know what to think other than that. Your heart is in your throat. I didn't have an immediate thought that I was going to die. But that's your instinct ... You're on the precipice. I don't know how to describe it. It was just so surreal, also because there's that strangeness, the peacefulness and the silence of gliding -- and gliding on the other hand is taking you toward your end."

Down below the clouds, Huggett banked the plane sharply to the right, as if, Curtis thought, he was looking for somewhere to land. The plane banked again and she could see out the window. It was raining with poor visibility, except for a stretch of clear-cut mountainside.

"It was up in sunlight and you could see there was snow on it," Curtis recalls. "My reaction was that's where we're going down."

Still about 20 kilometres from Port Alberni, Huggett had sent out a mayday call to say he was going to try to crash land on a logging road. To reduce the potential of fire, Huggett shut down the plane's electrical system and the Caravan disappeared from radar.

Huggett told the passengers to get ready for impact. Curtis felt the plane hit the top of some trees, 60 feet above the ground. It pitched nose-first into the mountain, just short of one of a series of logging roads in the area.

When search and rescue arrived, they pulled the five women and Emma from the wreckage. They also recovered the bodies of Huggett, Terry Douglas, 58, and Braeden Hale.

Nine days before the crash, Transport Canada investigators had visited Sonicblue's offices and found that six planes had missed mandatory inspections.

Investigators discovered Huggett's Caravan was more than 270 hours past due for an inspection of the struts that hold up the plane's wings. The company agreed to do the work, but put the Caravan back in the air before the inspection was finished.

Inspectors hadn't considered Sonicblue an immediate safety risk since the company had agreed to fix the problems, said Rod Nelson, Transport Canada's B.C. spokesperson.

The plane crashed before the work was done. Sonicblue's licence was immediately suspended and Transport Canada's enforcement branch launched a separate investigation into whether Sonicblue violated any federal regulations.

Two months later, Transport Canada cancelled the company's licence and fined it $125,000 for the missed inspections -- the largest penalty ever laid against a B.C. airline. The Transportation Safety Board is still investigating why a crack in the blade of the Cessna's turbine compressor wheel was never detected.

Transport Canada says making the decision to shut down an airline simply takes time.

"It doesn't matter which airline you're talking about, you can't go out there and say, 'Well, I think this isn't safe so I'm shutting you down.' You'd be in federal court," said Merlin Preuss, head of civil aviation with Transport Canada. "You have to give them time to respond and then you have to take the appropriate action.

"That's not stopping us from taking immediate action when there's an emergency, but we're required to show that something is not safe."

Last week, two lawsuits were filed in British Columbia, one from the family of Braeden Hale, the other from Stacey Curtis and Marissa Richmond. In the latter suit, the plaintiffs claim that an engine design flaw, coupled with poor maintenance, caused the crash. They also allege that air traffic controllers directed the pilot to Tofino instead of the closer Port Alberni; and that Transport Canada did not properly regulate Sonicblue. Among those named in the suits are Sonicblue, Transport Canada, Nav Canada and Cessna.

Allegations contained in the suit have not been proven in court. Statements of defence have not yet been filed.

The airline's owner, Ranjit Gill, said he isn't responsible for the crash because another company, Winnipeg's Standard Aero, had overhauled the engine in early November. Aero, which was also named in the lawsuit, admits it worked on the engine, but declined further comment because of the TSB investigation.

Gill defended his company's safety record. Although the crash that killed Huggett was the company's third fatal accident in eight years, Gill said the number of incidents has been low considering the airline operates in an industry where both risks and the pressure to deliver is high.

"You've got lower time pilots flying sometimes older equipment in tough weather conditions, which is challenging in that you've got customers who need the product moved or people moved," said Gill. "It's pressure."

However, he said employees were never pressured to compromise safety. It was ultimately up to pilots whether they felt it was safe to fly.

"If people had concerns they should have brought them up at the time. And if they did, they all were dealt with in that forum," Gill said.

"We, over and over and over, until we were blue in the face, said to people, 'Fly the planes if they're safe. If you have concerns, follow the procedures. Do what you think is right.'"

In the past three years, Sonicblue had started showing up on Transport Canada's radar. The regulator charged the company or its pilots six times between 2003 and 2005 for offences that included flying with broken equipment, unsecured loads and not following air traffic control instructions.

Fines ranged from $100 for a pilot who violated an air traffic control clearance, to $40,000 in 2004 for using the company's flight school pilots on bird counting flights for Ducks Unlimited.

Transport Canada often took months to lay charges against the company. It took close to a year to fine Sonicblue $5,000 and one of its pilots $200 for flying with a broken airspeed indicator, the equivalent of a car speedometer.

Transport Canada says it had Sonicblue under an "enhanced monitoring program," which would have meant monthly inspections.

However, Sonicblue's most senior pilot, Caravan Captain Darcy Coonfer, said in the nearly five years he worked there, Transport Canada investigators checked his plane on the ramp only twice -- less than he expected at a company that was under scrutiny.

"That's over 3,000 hours of flying, Monday to Friday, five days a week," he said. "That's pretty infrequent."

Rick Bray, a retired Transport Canada employee who was Sonicblue's primary inspector in the 1990s, said inspectors didn't spend enough time working hands-on with airlines.

A military-trained pilot and mechanic, Bray's expertise is inspecting planes for maintenance problems. But he said he spent much of his 14 years as an investigator at his desk, doing revisions and amendments to various licences.

"This is what inspectors are doing most of the time," said Bray, whose own son, Stan, was killed in 1996 while piloting a plane in the Queen Charlotte Islands. "They're kind of tied to an office desk shuffling paper back and forth."

Broad regulations that encourage voluntary compliance allow airlines to scrutinize themselves, he said. The regulations create too many opportunities for airlines to bend the regulations to suit their needs.

Little will change about the industry, warned Bray, until pilots themselves stand up and refuse to fly in unsafe conditions. The problem is that even if one refuses to fly, there are 10 more waiting to take the job.

"That's where the change to the pilot's attitude has to come in," Bray said. "One guys turns it down, they should all turn it down."

In interviews, former Sonicblue pilots say persistent safety concerns went ignored by both the company and regulators. Pilots said they complained repeatedly that problems with the aircraft would be signed off by maintenance and then reoccur. Some pilots said they accepted clearance to land at airports even though their plane didn't have the legally required navigational equipment.

Pilots said they also complained about wages -- for example, first officers made just $28 for a 14-hour shift, or about $7,300 a year. (At the top of the airline pay scale, Air Canada pilots with 30 years service make about $200,000 a year.)

Some Sonicblue pilots took second jobs to pay bills, as well as working five days a week.

"We were exhausted because we were really short-staffed," Captain Vanessa Griffith said. "We were really fatigued to the point where, now that I'm looking back, it was probably unsafe."

Stacey Curtis is recovering, but the plane crash has changed her profoundly, both physically and emotionally. Among her injuries, she suffered a punctured lung, six broken ribs, a fractured vertebrae that required six operations, a ruptured bowel, a fractured left leg and a shattered right ankle.

She still needs a cane, walker and occasionally a wheelchair to get around. She has intermittent hearing loss and her eyesight has changed.

An active and adventurous person, she loves travel and hopes the trauma from the crash won't lead to fear of flying. She feels Transport Canada should protect the public by shutting airlines down quickly once they uncover serious problems.

If there is anything that can be learned from this crash, she says, it's that the public, or at least the travel industry, should have full disclosure about problems and previous crashes, so they can make informed travel plans.

Transport Canada says public disclosure of inspection reports would be unfair to both airlines and passengers.

"It's a snapshot in time," said Lucie Vignola, TC senior communications adviser. "You're literally looking at one day or one week in the airline's life, so we don't think its fair to just go ahead and publicize that when the problem could be solved the next day or the next week.

"An airline shouldn't be judged by that one snapshot. It's a measure that we use as a yardstick to see are they following the regulations, are there areas they could improve upon, that kind of thing."

She added that passengers who wanted to see the inspection history would have to go through an access to information request.

Curtis said that had she known about the problems at Sonicblue, she never would have gotten on the plane.

"In this case, you look at the three individuals who didn't make it out of this situation," she said. "That's life that won't be lived, that won't be fulfilled, that's been denied. If there's information out there that can be made available to the public to make their own choices, then why can't we have that information? We can choose to heed it or ignore it.

"If that means that my life isn't destroyed, or turned upside down, or completely altered, which it is, then I have that right.

"Because you have nowhere else to turn when you're 9,000 feet up in the air."

[Chuck Ellsworth]

Ah, so the big bad regulator is to blame and now we can all breathe a sigh of relief.

widow, the_professor must not be aware of any of these things.

[safetywatch]

What I have always found hard to understand is the culture of some of the pilot community - the sort of macho bravado - a bit like a hazing initiation - that it is every young pilots duty to fly crap for no money under appalling conditions and too often to die. And please don't complain or try to do anything about it because you are not a pilot - you don't understand - this is what it really means to become a true pilot.

And so for 50 years this crap has persisted, almost because a certain culture exists in aviation that sees this as part of the gloroius quest to fly. I know this is not even a majority of pilots but it is prevalent. So there is always scorn poured on those who, albeit imperfectly and sometimes misguidedly try to do something about it - because real men don't complain they suffer and die!!! - and if you don't like it then do something else.

[The Hammer]

A post-accident evaluation determined that there were no terrain risks between the aircraft and the airport when the engine failed. The pilot did not know this because the ground was obscured by cloud. Had the aircraft been equipped with a serviceable TAWS, it would have informed the pilot that there were no terrain risks between the point of the engine failure and his intended emergency landing field. With this information, he may have continued with his original plan to fly directly to the Port Alberni Regional Airport rather than descending into a mountainous region to maintain visual reference with the ground.

Is it just me or is the tsb talking out of their derriere here? I have flown many aircraft with TAWS and not a single one would show whether a glide to an airport would be clear of terrain or not. Has anyone flown an aircraft which has a TAWS system that would do this?

My personal interpretation would be that the TSB means the "pretty colors" on the TAWS would display where terrain was relative to the a/c and would/could have displayed the terrain on the track to the airport rather that trying to guess where the rocks are when IMC. So no it may not tell you if your glidepath will make it, but it removes a lot of the guess work in the mountains.(the bottoms of the valleys are generally much better places to crash anyway) Is the technology readily available to predict obstacle clearance based on current speed/ descent rate? Yes it is, I use it to meet altitude crossing restrictions every day. A computer nerd I'm sure could make it do what your are suggesting

TRANSPORT CANADA is so pathetically in the back pocket of the operators on some issues it is sad. Other issues they are completely moronic from an Operators perspective. They need some BIPOLAR meds

Can someone explain to me why with the technology that is available, a 50 seat dash 8 or jet can fly into the mountains in Canada with archaic GPWS and an RNAV with no GPS sensor (that gets lost between YYC and YLW - never mind YVR-YXY) but down south anything with more than 9 seats does/will require TAWS??? It reminds me of the auto industry in the 60's arguing that things like seatbelts & crash impact zones in cars were unneccesary expenses!!!!

Transport is no better when it comes to cars/vans as we've seen in New Brunswick. Yes that Van would have still been on the road but schools would not be buying them new today.

PS It's nice to know that a 50 person Jet isn't required to have GPS/reliable Rnav but I can buy a GPS for my car ($400) that gives me directions, tells me where redlight cameras are, and changes in the speed limit .

Rant over

Kill the van for SEIFR until the engine failure rates meet the required level of safety

[boeingboy]

Sounds to me like a whole series of LINKS in the CHAIN OF EVENTS could have prevented this accident from either taking place at all, or from being fatal

Widow - That's what every accident is. There is never an accident that didn't have a multitude of breakdowns.

[boeingboy]

It is plotted out for all to see and shows every year that the 0.01 has been exceded.

Maybe you should review the graph again. Your statement is complete nonsense.

and TC measured that based on P&WC data which wasn't adequate.

Wrong again. P&W uses a worldwide standard to come up with this number. Again - it's in the report.

And while you guys are all pointing fingures at the different regulators and manufactures - just why hasn't anyone pointed any fingures at Sonicblue? The CT blades had almost 2000 hrs on them. That discrepancy should have been caught at overhaul. As well as a few other findings.

[marktheone]

First off, I never rant on here. No point in it.

There is only 2 questions involved in this crash.

1) What caused it? Answer engine failed.
2) Are there any mitigating circumstances or equipment that could have changed the outcome? Answer no other than a second engine.

Does Bill Yearwood even know what EGPWS is? Thats just what you need. Pull up pull up. I'm sure that would have been very helpful. Good god.

Jesus H. Christ this is ridiculous.

[the_professor]

1) What caused it? Answer engine failed.
2) Are there any mitigating circumstances or equipment that could have changed the outcome? Answer no other than a second engine.

That is exactly the point.

And while Widow and a few others on here were no doubt salivating at the prospect of TC somehow being blamed for a blade failure, the report makes the true cause clear.

This was not a cause crashed by culture. It was not a crash caused by the pilot being pressured to make the trip. The weather was good. There was no evidence of overloading. The pilot was trained correctly, and was neither drunk, nor high at the time of the crash.

A blade failed and killed the engine. It can and does happen, albeit in extremely rare cases.

Sorry to deflate the bubble of the Transport-haters out there, but you're barking up the wrong tree if you choose to hitch your wagon to this one.

[the_professor]

Ah, so the big bad regulator is to blame and now we can all breathe a sigh of relief.

widow, the_professor must not be aware of any of these things.

I'm well aware of the history and each of your personal vendettas against TC and the TSB. And it gets a little nauseating when every time someone scrapes some paint on a plane, the two of you are among the first to try and convince everyone that everything is the fault of one (or both) of those agencies.

[Widow]

Engine failures will happen. No matter how good the maintenance is, they will happen.

The CAUSE of the failure is important to determine, obviously ... but the TSB has pointed out that the engine failure COULD have been survivable ...

Why is it a problem to believe that inadequate oversight may have played a part in the SURVIVABILITY of this accident?

Isn't that what it's about? Surviving? I really don't want to hear anyone say "he died doing what he loved". I bet he would have LOVED to survive.

Mitigating risks, cost analysis ... it's all about making a buck. IMHO, the overseers listen to those who stand to make a buck, instead of those who stand to lose their life.

If the cost of being safe is prohibitive, then "you" shouldn't be in business.

[CID]

If the cost of being safe is prohibitive, then "you" shouldn't be in business.

Same goes for if you can't make the right decision without constant intensive oversight. Have a quality system, stick to it.

[trey kule]

Same goes for if you can't make the right decision without constant intensive oversight. Have a quality system, stick to it.

Geez, I think pigs might fly today....I have to agree with CID on something.

Because Mr. Hugget died, as his father has taken up the cause, it seems he shares no part of the responsibility for the way this company was suppossedly run. I feel for Mr. Hugget senior , and his loss, but the fact is, his son was part of the problem, not a victim of it.

Everyone seems to want to hate TC. They burden us down with useless paperwork. Their enfocement division is a bunch of improperly trained, vicious goons. All of which, I agree with.
But it seems everytime there is some kind of an accident, there are some on here who want to tie TC in as part of the problem. You cant have it both ways. More oversight?

I dont want TC involved in my life if I was a charter operator. The fact is they can do little, and quite frankly, should not be able to, before an accident happens. If they started, as they did occassionally in the past, trying to stop people from getting into the business, they would be screaming all to high heavan. I agree 100%. If you are the type of person who requires intensive oversight, then I would suspect you are the kind of person who would find a way around it.

Now I shall step back to avoid as much of the flames as possible.

[xsbank]

If you choose to fly a single-engine airplane all by yourself somewhere that you don't have an out when things go wrong and you die, we will all say "gee, he died doing something he loved" and we will soon forget you.

If you do the same and take passengers with you, we will analyze and pontificate, guess and wonder and stir the entrails (so to speak) until we find some closure or someone to blame.

There are two attitudes here: 1. the engine quit and some people died, tough darts, sh*t happens; 2. the engine quit and some people died - WHY? Can we do something so it never happens again?

Get yourself a pilot license and every time you do something not 'normal,' either because it was exceptional or because it was dumb, you are consenting to be the subject of a de-brief carried out by every other pilot out there, and barge-loads of 'interested persons' who will analyse and pontificate..... get used to it.

[the_professor]

Mitigating risks, cost analysis ... it's all about making a buck. IMHO, the overseers listen to those who stand to make a buck, instead of those who stand to lose their life.

This reality has been cited many times by the US NTSB and some legislators with regard to the FAA, whose mandate is very similar to TC's, i.e. to both promote and regulate aviation.

Obviously these can be conflicting interests at times, and that troubles some people.

But it is important to keep things in perspective. TC could easily and quickly ban all SEIFR operations in Canada. So let's say they go ahead and do it. How many people will then be beating down TC's doors because they are now forced to pay much more to a twin operator flying the same route? Or maybe there's no service at all because it is cost prohibitive without SEIFR.

Those who would defend SEIFR would point out (correctly) that the accident rate under SEIFR operations is exceedingly low, and that TC is being knee-jerk in their approach. Banning SEIFR wouldn't stop many accidents from happening, and yet it would increase the cost and/or reduce the service provided to consumers.

The accident rate does not support banning SEIFR. It is a calculated risk. Maybe passengers should be made more aware of this risk.

[safetywatch]

I can understand the SEIFR versus twin arguments. But here is the logic process. If the TSB is right and TAWS would have identified a safe glide path then given the US required TAWS from day one and it is not expensive, why wouldn't TC have done the same. I know some of you think TAWS wouldn't help and I can't comment.

Second issue is CARS sets a reliability criteria for power plant 0f 0.01 and TSB says the PT6 in a 208 has never met that and they plot the figures to prove it. So either you change CARS to 0.025 or you ban SEIFR - you can't allow SEIFR to continue when it doesn't meet CARS. But if you set CARS to 0.025 then statistically you have to plan for more engine failures in flight and that triggers other issues.

[boeingboy]

Oh My God Safetywatch.....get off your high horse and stop trying to make this more than it is. You have a real vendeta against TC. The PT6 does and has met the safety standard of .01. I SUGGEST YOU READ THE GRAPH. Maybe study it a little closer. Stop spreading lies saying it NEVER met the standard.

BTW - this is right from the report:

While the engine type that was involved in this accident met the established reliability
standard

[CID]

The accident rate does not support banning SEIFR. It is a calculated risk. Maybe passengers should be made more aware of this risk.

Bingo! SEIFR is supported by risk analysis. The problem is offering it commercially without (in my opinion) properly informing the public of the risks so they can make their own decision. Generally, the public is under the impression that airplanes they buy a ticket to board has all sorts of backup or redundant systems to prevent accidents. When you remove redundancy of the most important thing on the airplane you invalidate that general understanding.

When the government forced the tobacco companies to come clean by openly advertising the risks, the public reacted accordingly. As someone involved in aviation, I am aware of the issues and chose NOT to fly SEIFR commercially. PT-6 engines, are very reliable. Nobody here would argue that. But I've seen them fail. It's not unheard of in the industry to hear of a Twin Otter or Kingair limp home on one.

I feel that if enough people were similarily informed of the risks, the demand for SEIFR would drop.

With respect to TAWS, the system is designed to prevent CFIT by providing warnings. Class A systems the US and EASA require on larger commuter airplanes and airliners must include a terrain display that further aids the flightcrew in maintaining situational awareness. No such display is required on Class B systems required for smaller airplanes although many systems such as the optional class B TAWS embedded in the GNS 430/530 include a terrain display.

It really isn't designed for selecting a suitable route and area for glide and forced landing operations following a power loss. In fact, it may distract the pilot from paying attention to the flight instruments during the stressful high workload event. We're all taught to fly the airplane first. Glancing over and fiddling with TAWS display that isn't in the primary field of view could be quite distracting.

Many TAWS terrain displays don't show ALL terrain under the airplane either. Depending on the manufacturer, the available configurations and/or the available display mode, the pilot may only be able to view terrain that has potential for CFIT. Therefore in some systems, he would have seen a black screen at 9000 feet AGL and wouldn't see anything on the terrain display until he was much closer to the ground with more detail being added as the airplane descended.

Those who would defend SEIFR would point out (correctly) that the accident rate under SEIFR operations is exceedingly low...

Does anyone have statistics? Is the "rate" low or is the "incidence" low because the of the comparitively few commercial SEIFR operations?

Is twin engine IFR statistically safer or not?