Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Beechcraft 100 King Air, C-FAFD: Pilot negligence caused fatal plane crash -Transportation Safety Board of Canada.

The crash of a Kenn Borek plane near Kirby Lake, Alta. in October killed one person and injured nine others. CBC

FORT MCMURRAY, Alta. - Too much conversation in the cockpit and the crew's inability to see the runway were partly to blame for a fatal crash near a remote northeastern Alberta landing strip in October 2010.

Canada's Transportation Safety Board released the results of the investigation Tuesday.

Pilot Andrew Fielding , 31, was killed in the crash that seriously injured four others. Five others on the plane were able to walk away with only minor injuries.

The 12-seat Beechcraft King Air 100 slammed into muskeg just short of the 1.4 kilometres-long Kirby Lake air strip.

The passengers were travelling to Kirby as part of a regular crew change to the BP Kirby natural gas operation.

In the 11-page report, the TSB noted that during the initial stages of the approach to Kirby Lake, the crew was engaged in a conversation seemed unrelated to the operation of the flight. The casual nature of the conversation between the two-crew airplane - the pilot flying and the pilot not flying - suggests that they were not overly concerned with the approach and may not have been at a heightened level of attention, according to the report.

The report said that while a majority of the standard operating procedures were completed during the approach, a number of critical items, such as proper descent were not.

The crew also had difficulty identifying the runway during the descent in light snow, the report concluded.

Airspeed dropped to a point the plane stalled, said investigators. And though the aircraft was equipped with a stall warning system, it did not activate.

 Source:   http://www.thewhig.com

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