Keystone blames Transport Canada.

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Hangman
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Keystone blames Transport Canada.

Post by Hangman »

From today's Calgary Herald.

"Lawsuit blames air regulators for crash

The Canadian Press

Monday, January 31, 2005

The owners and pilot of a plane that crashed into a busy intersection more than two years ago, causing the death of an American passenger, are hoping to pin the blame on Canada's aviation regulator.

Keystone Air Service owner Cliff Arlt, pilot Mark Tayfel, and Budd's Gunisao Lake Lodge filed documents in Court of Queen's Bench this month, alleging Transport Canada is to blame for the 2002 crash because it didn't ground the airline.

The crash injured six American fishermen, one of whom later died from injuries received in the accident.

A lawyer for Keystone and the pilot could not be reached.

Sheila Floodman, whose father, 79-year-old Chester Jones died of his injuries, was angry when she heard of the statement of defence and cross claim filed in court.

"This plane ran out of fuel and they still say they carried out their duties fully?" Floodman said from her home in Kansas. "Clearly, Keystone and the other ones are callous and indifferent in treating people whose only mistake was flying with them."

The plane struck a transit bus, knocked down a light standard and sliced through the cargo area of a three-tonne truck before stopping in a downtown intersection."

Talk about save us from ourselves???

What a truly pathetic defence.
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Post by Flying Low »

How any of these cases get past the preliminary stages blows my mind. Things like...McDonalds made me fat...I spilled hot coffee on myself so it must be the company who brewed the coffees' fault...I suffered a head injury in a plane with no shoulder harnesses although I could have had them installed but chose not to.

According to this latest line of defence I can do 200 km/h down a residential street...run down and kill a kid but it can't be my fault...the police should have stopped me.

It is distressing that people think this way but it is sick that the courts can actually allow these cases to even get out of the starting blocks!
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Post by Legacy »

NOW does anyone wanna work for them. knowing this industry i am sure lots of low timers would still jump at the chance. pathetic
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Post by pilotbc69 »

the last thing we need is TC tightening it's a$$hole anymore than it already does. Thank Christ our courts don't suffer from the "me too" actions of our brothers and sisters to the south trying to get a piece of the pie and expecting any wrongdoing to trickle off like the water off a duck's back. I'd like to know who the genius who thought..."hey" "let's blame Transport Canada for giving us some responsibility"...i'm not a lawyer or anything...but fu%k me...
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Canus Chinookus
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Post by Canus Chinookus »

EXCEPT that Keystone did have a history that TC SHOULD have paid more attention to, FFS! What about the 'Ho that landed short of RW36 in the local forest in ywg?
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Post by Wilbur »

If that's the best their lieyers can cook up, they're in trouble. Sounds like they're trying to shift a percentage of the culpability (financial responsibility) to TC. Of course, it would seem that in doing so they are admitting they are f'ups who were operating in serious violation of any number of CARs. It's kind of hard to claim "TC should have shut us down" without admitting you were doing things wrong.
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EPR1.6
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Post by EPR1.6 »

Keystone Air Owners...
Please save us from ourselves Transport!
Its only illegal until you get caught, or kill some people...right Keystone
Just admit that you f*ck'd up and leave Transport out of it!
and yes, you should have been shut down, but I wonder how you managed to keep the props turning anyway?
You're making things difficult for the rest of us with your 'wasn't me' attitude. Go screw yourselves...oh you already did!
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Hangman
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Post by Hangman »

If this works I can see Robert Milton and Air Canada trying to sue the regulator for all the money it lost before going into bankrupcy. The excuse being of course that they (the regulator) should have realized that Air Canada could not survive by continuing to operate in a reckless manner.

I can see JetsGo suing saying that the regulator should have realized they (JetGo) couldn't survive by charging such low fares on a continuing basis.

It's always someone elses fault, no-one these days wants to accept responsibility for anything.
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Post by Cat Driver »

"alleging Transport Canada is to blame for the 2002 crash because it didn't ground the airline." "

This defense if true will bring some interesting questions to be answered. is it possible that evidence may be produced to show that they in fact should have been shut down?

epri.6 :

" leave Transport out of it!
and yes, you should have been shut down, but I wonder how you managed to keep the props turning anyway? "


I'm sort of dense epri.6, could you please explain how they should have been shut down, and TC has no connection to the problem?

Cat
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Post by Doc »

ROTFLMFAO!!!!! HEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEEH....WWWHHHOOOOO
Doc falls off his hight horse, only slightly injuring his lovely butt! Climbs back into the saddle....HEEEE HEEEEE HEEEEE HEEEEEEE....falls off horse again and nips out for a beer........Ya! That's the ticket....a beer. TC made me do it!! Yup! That's it....that pesky TC guy came out under the cover of darkness and sucked all that fuel out of the Navajo!! And these guys have the balls to actually show themselves in public????
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Post by Cat Driver »

Doc :

What I find so weird about this is the irony of such a defense.

There are not many explinations to this one except that Keystone is admitting they were flying in contrevention of law and therefore TC should have shut them down.......

....Now on the other side of this coin don't you want to see what TC has to say in their own defense... are they going to say, but your honor all the paperwork was perfect? :roll:

....this defense tactic if true is "REALLY" weird..

Cat
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Post by ahramin »

Certainly i am the first to tell transport to go fly a kite (they might learn something).

But Transport does claim that they are making transportation safer for john q mouth-breathing public. In fact they use up quite a chunk of taxpayer money with that excuse. So shouldn't they be held accountable?

Yes i realize that rather than making transportation safer, Transport's whole goal seems solely to be avoiding the very liability claimed by Keystone. So shouldn't someone take a crack at showing they can't even do that right?
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Post by Doc »

Following that line of thought.....dont issue an OC to anybody. Because every company eventually will have a shunt! So, if TC just grounds everybody.....Joe Public will be safe?
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Post by Donkey Hauler »

Wasn't a similar defence used by Wapiti Aviation out of Grand Praire, following a crash of their Navajo? I beieve that this type of defence was successfull, but I don't know the full details.
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EPR1.6
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Post by EPR1.6 »

Hey Cat, I didn't intend to sound like I was defending TC. They're perfectly capable of doing that on their own, maybe... :wink:
And NO, I don't work for TC.
The point is, this is a 'lame duck' defense. If they believe Transport should've shut them down to prevent this accident, then they are aware that they had unsafe practices. Any responsible business owner would've corrected the problem.
Then again, they could still be in denial over they're culpability and thus the suit against TC. :roll:
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Like a drowning rat...

Post by stevewilson »

I'm sure Keystone doesn't believe this defence any more than the rest of us. They are obviously clawing for survival and desperately reaching for any lifeline that may mitigate any punishment or losses. I bet the conversation went somthing like:

Lawyer: "Well, you are pretty much screwed, unless.....Naw, you wouldn't be interested...."

Keystone: "Try us, try us! We'll do anything!"

Lawyer: "We could blame the government for not stopping you from killing someone years ago with your shabby tactics..." (shrug)

Keystone: "And I sign here, right?"

Or something along those lines. :roll:

Easily the most pathetic thing I have seen in a long time, but desperate people do strange things.
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Post by CD »

Donkey Hauler wrote:Wasn't a similar defence used by Wapiti Aviation out of Grand Praire, following a crash of their Navajo? I beieve that this type of defence was successfull, but I don't know the full details.
I'm not sure that this was a defence, per se. I believe that the suit was filed by the survivors against a number of defendents, including the government. In any case, I believe that it was successful in that the government was found partly at fault:
In Swanson and Peever v. Canada ((1991) 124 N.R. 218), Canada paid compensation to the families of those killed in the crash of an airplane owned by Wapiti Aviation. Transport Canada was well aware of Wapiti’s past safety violations but did not take sufficient measures to force Wapiti to correct its system. There was evidence that a Transport Canada inspector had warned his superiors about Wapiti’s “total disregard for regulations, rights of others and safety of passengers” and said also that without intervention, “we are virtually certain to be faced with a fatality”.
I wasn't able to locate the entire court document on line (although I believe that it is available somewhere) but here is the site where I copied the summary from:

Suing the Government
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Post by Cat Driver »

Until there is the political will within TC to change the CYA and make all decisions based on the make no decision mentality that rules at TC there will be no shortage of opportunity for such law suits to prevail in this industry.

Once again may I suggest that most of these situations can be rectified if the power of the positions of Chief Pilot / Operations managers were fully supported at the level of the regulator.

Unfortunately these positions are in most cases window dressing and part of TC's CYA mentality.

Cat
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The hardest thing about flying is knowing when to say no


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Post by FamilyGuy »

From now on, TC will be shutting down companies left, right and centre. Don't kid yourselves, your company could be next...just ask Skyw@rd!! Coincedence...I think not!?

IMHO they were NOT a co-ink-e-dink. Total muscle flexing to show everyone else what happens when you question the allmighty...

This defense is a very interesting angle to take however.

As a representative of the Crown, Transport is and should be completley accountable for ALL its actions and/or inactions (right Cat? :wink: ). Of course its ridicuous to even try and say they were "directly" responsible for the plane running out of gas - that's a no-brainer. However "indirectly" responsible or at least "contributing" to the event as the governing/regulatory body for not censuring or correcting known deficiencies that were contrary to policy... there might actually be a case to be made there. I have no idea but I wonder what is really behind that claim....

Is it really going to be such a bad thing if TC follows the letter of the law and actually starts suspending OC's for repeated violations? I suppose there will be excessive strictness at first, but ultimately aren't all those rules and procedures in your OC SUPPOSED to be followed anyway? Or is that really just window dressing to make the public/politicians "feel" safe in your airplane?

Ah good times... :roll:
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Post by Cat Driver »

The case that CD linked here is a classic example of how the system has worked for decades.

I well remember the company and the way they operated, the findings of the court were to be expected.

I am not a lawyer, but I bet if given some time and money I could find enough people that would testify to the fact that many of the companies that get away with skirting the regulations are well known to TC....that is a no brainer....

...the problem can only be fixed by changing the upper management at TC.

And it will never happen, because they are politicians and so deeply buried behing their CYA policies they are untouchable.

Just look at the sucess or lack thereof that Shelia Fraser has had with her revelations....

So I personally have decided to do what ever it takes to make a buck in the few years that I have remaining and the only law that I will worry about is the law of survival.

There all you young'uns, how is that for a lesson in piloting 101?

Cat
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The hardest thing about flying is knowing when to say no


After over a half a century of flying no one ever died because of my decision not to fly.
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Post by LH »

I'm amazed that anyone would be surprised at this lawsuit. It's been used in courtrooms for decades now. Hasn't anyone heard the Defense claim that "my client admits murdering XXX, but he was on drugs, he's an alcoholic, his father abused him, the priest abused him, etc., etc........and they get a reduced sentence even. Forget "consequences".......there is no such 'animal' in existence anymore, so why is everyone so surprised. I'm not being cynical at all.....just look around you. Why in the hell should aviation be any different......none of us can walk on water. I'm only slightly surprised that they didn't also sue the people that supplied them with the fuel, the Winnipeg Airport Authority, Winnipeg Transit and the drivers of the cars on the street they crashed into.....to say nothing about the personnel in the Tower and the wx people. We should consider ourselves lucky that they could afford their own lawyer, otherwise one would have had to be appointed and you know who pays for that.
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Post by shitdisturber »

I love the conspiracy theories that continuously come out of the woodwork around here. TC shut down Skyward because of the actions of Keystone; are you kidding me??? Let's be realistic here, the two incidents were what, a day apart, less? And TC reacted in that time??? Give me a break! While I'm sure there will be ramifications from this; no government department is capable of reacting to anything so minor as a lawsuit in under six weeks. Hell, if you bombed TC hq in Ottawa and levelled the place there wouldn't be any reaction for at least two weeks, assuming anybody actually noticed there was nowhere to get out of the snow once their smoke break was over. 8)
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joe to go
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Post by joe to go »

Anyone need a good laugh, read this link, go to page 10

http://www.manitobaaviationcouncil.ca/m ... ation8.pdf
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Post by stallnfall »

Amazing that they waited till the week after their big audit to file these charges. Maybe nest time Tc will open their eyes while they are doing the inspection? :idea:
Still can’t believe what a pilot will do for $2100 a month, ignorance is bliss!! :evil:
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Post by Schlem »

joe to go wrote:Anyone need a good laugh, read this link, go to page 10

http://www.manitobaaviationcouncil.ca/m ... ation8.pdf
I found this funny... "With the exception of Air Canada, Keystone
Air Services Ltd. is poised to become one of the first Canadian aviation service providers to implement SMS."


I had started implementing a SMS as a CASO back in 2001 for a 703/704 operation.
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