MARKHAM: A part failure is being blamed for a plane crash that killed a Burlington businessman and his passenger last year.
Pilot Paul Jess, 54, and friend Nancy Noakes, 50, died on May 25, 2010, after Jess’s Cirrus SR20 four-seat plane crashed into the roof of a toy company. The accident occurred at about 12:30 p.m.
The plane had just taken off from Buttonville Municipal Airport on a flight to the Burlington Airpark, where Jess kept his plane. Jess was trying to return to Buttonville after reporting mechanical troubles — witnesses reported seeing smoke — when it crashed into Thinkway Toys, half a kilometre from the airport.
The Transportation Safety Board, in its report on the crash, determined a cylinder head failed because of fatigue and separated from the cylinder during takeoff, resulting in reduced power from the engine. It also found while Jess was manoeuvring the plane for the return to Buttonville, the craft stalled and entered into a spin at an altitude from which recovery was impossible. It is estimated the aircraft did not reach more than 500 feet before it banked and crashed. The 14 workers inside Thinkway escaped safely, but two received minor injuries.
Jess, a father of three, was an experienced pilot who operated Holly’s Pride, a luxury pet kennel business with facilities in Burlington and Ancaster. He had bought the plane, which was built in 1999, in 2008. It was equipped with an airframe-mounted emergency parachute system.
Noakes, who had just got her pilot licence at the end of April 2010, had worked since 2000 as a part-time employee at the Bruce Street branch of the Milton Public Library.
The safety board said it determined the cylinder crack was the first of its kind involving the plane’s engine. It also determined there was no practical way of identifying any crack in this location without “destructive testing.” It believed the cylinder head failed just before takeoff or just after liftoff.
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