Monday, August 13, 2012

Piper PA-30, Canadian Registration C-GLGJ: Accident occurred August 13, 2012 in Kelowna, Canada

NTSB Identification: ANC12WA087 
14 CFR Unknown
Accident occurred Monday, August 13, 2012 in Kelowna, Canada
Aircraft: PIPER PA-30, registration: C-GLGJ
Injuries: 1 Fatal,3 Serious.

On August 13, 2012, about 1729 Pacific daylight time, a Piper PA-30 airplane, (Canadian Registration C-GLGJ) was on a VFR flight plan from Penticton to Boundary Bay, British Columbia. The Canadian Joint Rescue Coordination Centre received an ELT signal, and a search was commenced. The aircraft had crashed in a wooded area near the Brenda Lake mine site, approximately 18 nm west of Kelowna, BC. One of the occupants was deceased, and the other three were transported to the hospital with critical injuries.

The accident investigation is under the jurisdiction and control of the Canadian government. This report is for information purposes only and contains only information released by or obtained from the Canadian government. Further information pertaining to this accident may be obtained from:

Transportation Safety Board of Canada
200 Promenade du Portage
Place du Centre, 4th Floor
Hull, Quebec K1A 1K8
Canada

Tel.: (1) 819-994-4252
(1) 819-997-7887 (24 hour)
E-mail: airops@tsb.gc.ca
Fax: (1) 819-953-9586
Website: http://www.tsb.gc.ca





A 30-year-old White Rock man has been identified as the victim of a plane crash near Kelowna on Monday. Jayson Dallas Wesley Smith - who went by the name Dallas Smith - was aboard a PA 30 Piper Twin Comanche en route to Boundary Bay Airport in Delta when the plane from Penticton went off course and ended up in a wooded area near Brenda Mines.  

 He was pronounced dead on scene.

Smith - not to be confused with the country musician from Langley of the same name - attended Semiahmoo Secondary school and recently moved to Vancouver.

During a memorial Tuesday night in White Rock, he was remembered by friends and family as an adventurous type with a tremendous will to live.


The Transportation Safety Board is investigating a grisly plane crash near Okanagan Lake that left one man dead and three people clinging to life in B.C. hospitals. 

 Vancouver resident Jayson Dallas Wesley Smith, 30, died in the Monday afternoon crash, according to identification by the B.C. Coroners Service. The three survivors are in critical condition after sustaining life-threatening injuries. But once they are able to speak, investigators will want to talk to them, said the TSB’s media relations manager, John Cottreau. “We understand that they’ve been through a trauma,” he said. “So we’re going to give them time.”

For now, the investigators will gather radar information from air traffic control, look into the aircraft’s maintenance history, research the pilot’s credentials and photo-document the site, he said. They will take parts of the plane’s wreckage – including detached wings and a broken fuselage – for further investigation.

Since late 1963, there have been 325 accidents – including Monday’s – involving Piper PA-30 airplanes, the Aviation Safety Network database says. These include more than 50 fatalities in the past decade, and most often the planes have been damaged beyond repair, according to data from the network, which is run by the international Flight Safety Foundation.

In August, 2010, four people died in a Piper Comanche single-engine plane that crashed near Apex Mountain after departing from Penticton. The plane’s weight and the hot, thin air may have been contributing factors in the crash, a coroner’s report concluded.


http://www.flickr.com/photos/23870098@N04/5002697498/sizes/l/

C-GLGJ 1964 Piper PA-30 Twin Comanche Owner Rick Zyvitski/Maplewood Landscaping of Delta, based Boundry Bay Airport purchased September 2011
  
 PEACHLAND, B.C. - Warrant Officer Dan Lamoureux was in a Buffalo search-and-rescue plane almost 300 metres above British Columbia's Okanagan Valley when he spotted a tangled mess of metal in a patch of broken trees.

It was the wreckage of a small plane, a twin-engine Piper PA-30 Comanche, that went down hours earlier, killing one person and critically injuring three others.

"Just to the left of (our) aircraft, I looked down and saw some white and red, you could easily tell that it was scrap metal," Lamoureux said in an interview Tuesday, a day after the fatal crash.

"I'm looking for anything that looks odd to me, so this wreckage caught my eye. It was something out of the normal, and a lot of broken trees. "

Lamoureux was returning to the 19 Wing Comox air force base on Vancouver Island from a training mission Monday afternoon when a WestJet airliner reported picking up an emergency locator beacon.

It took the Buffalo almost two hours before the crew finally located the wreckage in an area near the community of Peachland on the west side of Okanagan Lake. The plane left Penticton en route to Boundary Bay, south of Vancouver.

Lamoureux and another search-and-rescue technician strapped on their parachutes, aimed for an open field a short distance from the crash site and jumped out of the Buffalo, which by then was more than 750 metres above the ground.

When they landed, they set into the trees on foot.

"From a distance, we yell, 'Hello, hello, we're search and rescue, we're here to help!'" recalled Lamoureux.

"And, oh my God, I couldn't believe I heard a response from a female voice."

The search-and-rescue technicians eventually reached the crash site, where they found what was left of the plane on the forest floor. Its wings were broken off and the fuselage was no longer in one piece, he said.

One person was dead. The woman who called for help was sitting up and able to talk, while the two other survivors were unconscious, said Lamoureux.

Soon after, firefighters, police and paramedics arrived at the scene. An air ambulance and a military Cormorant helicopter landed in the open field.

As the firefighters and search-and-rescue technicians removed the survivors, the air ambulance transported two of them, including the most serious, to hospital. One of those two patients was later transferred to Vancouver, said the Transportation Safety Board.

The third was airlifted in the Cormorant to Kamloops.

"Everything worked like clockwork," said Lamoureux, crediting the various agencies involved.
The survivors' precise conditions were not known, although a spokeswoman for the B.C. Coroners Service said at least one of the patients was "not doing at all well."

The Transportation Safety Board sent two investigators to the scene, where they were expected to examine the aircraft before attempting the delicate task of speaking with survivors.

Lamoureux said it appeared the plane entered the trees from the open field, though he wasn't sure whether the aircraft may have been attempting to land.

Bill Yearwood from the Transportation Safety Board said it was too early to determine whether the plane was landing. He said the aircraft had not caught fire, which will make it easier for investigators to piece together what happened.

Another spokesman for the safety agency, John Cottreau, said it's not clear when investigators would be able to speak to the survivors.

"They're going to want to play it by ear, take their time," Cottreau said, referring to interviews with survivors.

"These folks have been through a trauma, so they're going to wait for an appropriate time."

The crash occurred in the same area where a de Havilland Beaver crashed in a ball of flame in May, killing all three aboard. At the time, witnesses said that aircraft appeared to be trying to gain altitude but could not climb quickly enough to avoid the steep terrain.

Two years ago, another plane crash involving a Piper Comanche that departed from Penticton killed four people. That plane, a single-engine aircraft, crashed in August of 2010 near Apex Mountain.
The Transportation Safety Board didn't conduct a full investigation of that crash, but a coroner's report concluded a combination of the plane's weight and hot, thin air likely contributed.

The weather in the area was above 30 degrees on Monday, according to Environment Canada.
Cottreau stressed it was far too early to speculate on what caused Monday's crash.

"But certainly, meteorological conditions are one of the things that we look at every time."


 
One of three survivors of a plane crash 30 kilometres west of Kelowna, B.C, is airlifted to hospital Monday evening with life-threatening injuries. 
(Brady Strachan/CBC)



 

 http://www.flickr.com/photos/23870098@N04/5002697498/sizes/l/

C-GLGJ 1964 Piper PA-30 Twin Comanche Owner Rick Zyvitski/Maplewood Landscaping of Delta, based Boundry Bay Airport purchased September 2011


Two women and a man are in critical condition after a PA 30 Piper Twin Comanche airplane crashed 30 kilometres west of Kelowna, B.C., Monday.

A man died in the crash, but his name has not been released.

Two Transportation Safety Board inspectors are on their way to the wooded area near Brenda Mines.

John Cottreau, a spokesperson with the Transportation Safety Board, said inspectors will examine the mechanisms that control and steer the plane, as well as the plane's maintenance record and pilot's certifications.

"They are going to be looking at the control surfaces of the aircraft, that's the ailerons and the flaps, they are going to be looking at the engines, they are going to be documenting the entire site photographically as well as the wreckage," said Cottreau.

The flight plan says the plane was to leave the Penticton airfield Monday afternoon, heading over Princeton en route to the Boundary Bay airport in Delta.

But not long after takeoff, the plane veered off course, northwards, said Captain Stu Robertson with the Rescue Co-ordination Centre in Victoria.

"The actual crash site was not a direct line from Penticton to Princeton. Why that was, I don't know. It could be weather or just following a topographical feature to get them en route," said Robertson.

The plane went down shortly after 3 p.m. PT near a forest service road off the Coquihalla Connector highway.

It crashed in a heavily wooded area, forcing rescue personnel to parachute into the crash zone and use chainsaws to get to the plane and the people on board.

"They did parachute into the area," said Annie Djiotsa, a spokesperson with Canadian Forces Esquimalt. "Had they used the road it would have taken longer to actually access the crash site."

Robertson said it's a good thing the pilot had an emergency locator on board. He said without it, locating the survivors in time would have been difficult.

On Tuesday morning, RCMP confirmed a man and a woman had been airlifted from the scene by helicopter to Kelowna General Hospital.

 A second woman was airlifted to Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops, but RCMP said she may be taken to Vancouver General Hospital later on Tuesday.

 http://www.cbc.ca


Police responded after a plane went down near Kelowna, B.C.
 (Brady Strachan/CBC)


 One person died and three others were critically injured after a small plane crashed 30 kilometres west of Kelowna, B.C., according to police.

Two of the injured passengers were taken to Kelowna by air ambulance, a spokesperson for the B.C. Ambulance Service said. Paramedics flew the third to Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops by military helicopter, a spokesperson said.

The plane — a PA 30 Twin Comanche — departed from Penticton and was heading to Boundary Bay airport, near Vancouver. It went down near Brenda Mines, according to Annie Djiotsa from the Rescue Co-ordination Centre in Victoria. The cause of the crash is not known.

A Cormorant helicopter from Canadian Forces Base Comox located the crash site, after a signal from the plane's emergency locater beacon was received, Djiotsa said. Emergency crews then parachuted into the area.

The Transportation Safety Board will investigate the crash.

Earlier this year, three people were killed in a float plane crash in the same area.
In that case, a single-engine de Havilland Beaver went down in a heavily-wooded area in May. The cause of the crash is still unknown.

Story, comments and photo:  http://www.cbc.ca
 
PEACHLAND, B.C. - One person was killed and three others were rushed to hospital after a small plane crashed in British Columbia's southern interior on Monday evening.

 Search and rescue officials say the plane was travelling from Pentiction to Boundary Bay when it went down around 5 p.m. local time.

Canadian Navy search and rescue spokeswoman Capt. Annie Djiotsa says the Piper twin engine Commanche crashed near Brenda Mines, about 22 kilometres west of Peachland in B.C.'s Okanagan region.

She says a Cormorant helicopter was dispatched to the crash site, which was about 55 kilometres from Pentiction.

Chris Harbord from the B.C. Ambulance Service confirmed three people in critical condition were taken from the crash site to hospitals in Kelowna and Kamloops.

"It took a while for search and rescue to find the plane and when they did we understood there was four patients onboard," she said.

The Transportation Safety Board says it will be investigating the crash and plans to send two officials to the site on Tuesday morning.



 Emergency crews have parachuted into the area where a small plane crashed near Kelowna, B.C., after a signal from the plane's emergency locater beacon was received.
 
 "We immediately sent a Cormorant helicopter from Canadian Forces Base Comox ... [We have] located the site of the crash," said Annie Djiotsa, who is with the Rescue Co-ordination Centre in Victoria.

Initial reports said there were four people on board, but that is unconfirmed.

One unconfirmed report says there are three casualties with moderate injuries, but the Rescue Co-ordination Centre says it is still assessing the scene and cannot confirm that.

B.C. Ambulance Service said it has three ground ambulances standing by and an air ambulance en route.


http://www.cbc.ca

The Joint Rescue Coordination Centre has confirmed a plane has gone down about 30-kilometres west of Kelowna. 

 Three people have been injured and are being transported to area hospitals.

Unconfirmed reports have indicated it's a Piper P30 with up to four people on board. There is no word on the condition of the fourth person.

Search and Rescue dispatched a Buffalo Aircraft and Cormorant Helicopter, as well as Fire, Ambulance, and RCMP to the scene.

Rescue personnel parachuted in to the site near Brenda Mine Road. They reached the site at about 6:30 p.m.


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