WINNIPEG – Pilot inexperience was a main factor in a 2012 crash in northwestern Ontario that killed four people, including the pilot, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada said Thursday.
“There are very many factors here,” said Peter Hildebrand, of the Transportation Safety Board. “He certainly had experience in the Manitoba winter conditions.
“It was a host of things that were new in the pilot’s operating situation.”
Keystone Air Service Flight 213 from Winnipeg to North Spirit Lake, Ont., crashed into a frozen lake less than two kilometres from the runway on Jan. 10, 2012. The Piper PA31-350 Navajo Chieftain was destroyed by the impact and following fire.
Pilot Fariborz Abasabady, 41, of Lockport, Man., Colette Eisinger, 39, and Martha Campbell, 38, both from Winnipeg, and Ben Van Hoek, 62, of Carman, Man., all died in the crash. Brian Shead, 36, was the only survivor.
Campbell’s mother told Global News she has been waiting for answers.
“We never really heard anything before about what really happened,” Charlotte Rae said from her home in North Spirit Lake.
Her daughter was flying back from Winnipeg, where her husband was on dialysis.
“It’s just like it happened today,” said Rae. “That is how it hits me.”
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Time spent airborne in icing conditions near the airport likely caused ice accumulation on the plane, a Transportation and Safety Board news release said, causing an increase in its aerodynamic drag and stall speed.
That would have caused the aircraft to stall during the plane’s final approach, and due to low altitude, the plane couldn’t recover.
The pilot’s decision to descend into cloud and continue in icing conditions was probably due to inadequate awareness of the plane’s performance in such conditions and de-icing capabilities, the safety board report says.
In addition, the decision to approach an airport without an instrument approach in adverse weather was likely due to pilot inexperience and a desire to successfully complete the flight.
Abasabady previously was a flight instructor who was new to commercial flights, Hildebrand said. He was employed with Keystone for less than a year before the crash.
The plane wasn’t equipped with a cockpit voice recorder or flight data recorder and there was no control tower at North Spirit Lake and no radio contact with the plane after it left Winnipeg.
Since the accident, an instrument approach procedure has been approved for the North Spirit Lake airport, the safety board said. The TSB has also issued a recommendation calling for the installation of lightweight flight recording systems on small commercial aircraft.
Keystone Air Service has also made changes to prevent such accidents in future, including revising its operations manual to better reflect operational requirements in icing conditions.
Keystone didn’t speak with reporters on Thursday but issued a statement saying it was satisfied with the report.
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