The pilot who crashed a float plane off the Sunshine Coast in bad weather in 2008 – killing himself and six passengers – had been warned three times by his employer about his risk-taking behaviour.
The last warning to 54-year-old experienced pilot Peter McLeod came just three months before the crash.
The information was contained in a Transportation Safety Board report into the plane crash into Thormanby Island on Nov. 16, 2008.
A spokesman for Pacific Coastal Airlines, McLeod’s employer, confirmed Wednesday that the warnings had been issued.
The TSB report said it was McLeod’s sole choice to take off in bad weather at 10 a.m. that day – and that he gave his seven passengers the option to get off the plane, warning it would be a tough flight.
Since the crash, Pacific Coastal Airlines has changed its flight dispatch system so that pilots can’t make the call to take off by themselves, the TSB says.
The TSB indicated that Pacific Coastal Airlines was concerned the pilot was putting pressure on younger company pilots to match his fly-at-all-costs style.
“This pilot was caught by his own confidence,” TSB investigator Bill Yearwood told The Province. “There are bold pilots and old pilots, but there are no bold old pilots.”
Yearwood noted that it is not the TSB’s role to judge whether the pilot or Pacific Coastal Airlines was negligent. The agency’s mandate is to investigate accidents and make recommendations, where appropriate, to make transportation safer in future.
Thomas Wilson was the only passenger to survive the crash, and the information he gave to TSB investigators was crucial, lead investigator Travis Shelongosky said.
Shelongosky said Transport Canada has been backing away from flight-rule enforcement for about 10 years, and said the federal department must reverse the trend, put teeth into regulations and enforce them – or pilots will continue to put themselves and passengers at risk.
For Transport Canada to enforce such a system and move away from the “self-monitoring” style of flight safety, changes would have to pass through Parliament, he said.
The plane – a Grumman Goose amphibious airplane – smashed into trees on the island about 19 minutes after taking off from Vancouver International Airport. It was on its way to a Plutonic Power Corp. work camp near Toba Inlet to deliver workers and supplies.
“[The pilot’s skill and confidence] can be detrimental because it leaves no room for error,” Yearwood said. “In that reduced visibility he wasn’t able to respond fast enough.”
Still, the investigation showed the pilot was climbing quickly and nearly cleared the trees on the mountain peak that he smashed into.
“With 100 feet more visibility or 10 less knots of speed, he might have done it,” Yearwood said. “He was very close to clearing those trees.”
Between 2000 and 2009, there were 129 bad-weather-caused crashes across Canada similar to the Thormanby Island accident, and 128 total fatalities, the TSB report says.
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