Bob Reany, 74, died Monday in the crash of Socata TBM 850 (C-FBKK) - the plane he used as an flight instructor.
(Photo courtesy of the Reany family)
Lorenzo Girones
Registered the Socata TBM 850 just two weeks ago
Video above: Lorenzo Girones and Bob Reany at the controls of C-FBKK on October 06, 2012.
18 knot cross wind landing at Buttonville, Ontario on Saturday, October 6, 2012 in Socata TBM850 (C-FBKK) on runway 33.
18 knot cross wind landing at Buttonville, Ontario on Saturday, October 6, 2012 in Socata TBM850 (C-FBKK) on runway 33.
Looks like Bob is on the left, Lorenzo as co-pilot.
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Police have identified the man who died in the crash of a small plane near Calabogie, Ont. as a 74-year-old man from Port Elgin, Ont.
Ontario Provincial Police said Robert John Reany died at the scene after his plane crashed at about 12:20 p.m. Monday between Calabogie and Griffith, Ont.
Goderich
Municipal Airport confirmed the six-seat Socata TBM-850 was travelling
from the Carp Airport, west of Ottawa, to Goderich, Ont., in
southwestern Ontario.
The airport confirmed the pilot died but said no one else, including the plane's owner, was on board.
A Timmins, Ont., lawyer, Lorenzo Girones, registered the Socata just two weeks ago.
The airport confirmed the pilot died but said no one else, including the plane's owner, was on board.
A Timmins, Ont., lawyer, Lorenzo Girones, registered the Socata just two weeks ago.
Wife of pilot said flying was his dream
Reany's wife, Grace Reany, said her husband was hired to teach the owner how to fly the new plane from France.
Reany said her husband had just dropped off the lawyer in Carp and he was headed back to the airport in Goderich to pick her up and take her to see Ottawa for the first time.
She said he had been flying since the 1960s, and that it was his dream.
"We talked about this kind of thing happening, many times. And we knew that it does happen. And I understand it was pretty quick, for which I am grateful," said Reany.
"But I put him in God's hands when he goes out in the morning every day, and so I know he's there now, safe and sound," she said.
Plane crashed at 'steep' angle
The cause of the crash is not yet known, investigators from the Transportation Safety Board of Canada said Tuesday in Calabogie.
They are looking for a small panel that could help determine what happened to the plane because it contains all the flight information.
But after early stages in the investigation, the wreckage shows the plane crashed violently, nose-first at a "steep" angle with a "great deal of speed and velocity."
"[The plane] picked up and moved a very large oak tree — about 18 to 19 inches in diameter — about 50 feet from the impact point," said investigator Ewan Tasker, who arrived in Calabogie from Toronto Monday evening.
Tasker also said investigators can only get as close as 500 metres from the crash site, which makes the clean-up of debris difficult. That will start in the coming days.
"The aircraft is heavily destroyed and fragmented into many pieces. The largest of which is probably the engine, the rest of them is smaller than that," Tasker added.
The aircraft will then be reconstructed in an Ottawa laboratory to determine what caused the crash. There are no similar crashes in Canada involving the Socata TBM-850, Tasker added.
Renfrew OPP members also continue to investigate the crash.
The brother of a pilot killed in a plane crash near Calabogie, Ont., Monday said 74-year-old Bob Reany of Port Elgin had always loved flying and had logged thousands of hours in the air.
William Reany, a pilot himself, said brother Bob had flown across the Atlantic and to Africa and back numerous times, a passion he enjoyed until his final day.
In fact, William said, after watching their father waste away ravaged from cancer, he believes his brother would’ve preferred to have died in a cockpit than a hospital bed.
“I guess he learned to fly sometime in the late ‘60s. It’s something both of us always wanted to do, even as kids,” Reany said. “He learned to fly at first for pleasure, but then he got a commercial licence and he did a bit of that. The last 15 years or more, that’s what he’s done for a living.”
Reany said the plane his brother was flying Monday was new, but that he had flown in similar models often and was comfortable behind the controls.
“He had flown it a considerable amount. He had flown across the Atlantic about three times with a turboprop similar to the one that crashed. He went to Central Africa a few times to retrieve aircraft that were on aerial survey work.”
At 12:15 p.m., police were called to a wooded area between Calabogie and Griffith, about 80 kilometres west of Ottawa, to search for a small plane that went down for an unknown reason.
Goderich Municipal Airport manager Ken Bogie said the plane was leaving the Carp, Ont., airport and heading back to Goderich, Ont., in southwestern Ontario when it crashed 20 minutes into the trip.
Bogie confirmed the pilot was the only occupant.
The plane is owned by Timmins, Ont., lawyer and private pilot Lorenzo Girones.
Reany was giving Girones flying instruction on the newly purchased turbo-prop Monday. Reany dropped him at Carp then began his own flight home for Thanksgiving dinner with his wife of 46 years.
While Girones knows how to fly, he needed to learn the new plane.
Shortly after takeoff, Reany encountered an unknown emergency.
Reany said his brother would’ve likely been trying to manage whatever the problem was as long as possible before the crash.
“He wasn’t one to get easily frightened or frustrated or anything like that. He was calm, cool and collected.”
The likeliest cause of the crash, he suspects, was some sort of engine problem.
“It’s a new plane, so that shouldn’t happen, but depending on the altitude it could’ve ingested a bird. If that happened, it could cause an engine problem pretty quick. Right now, though, we don’t know what altitude he was at.”
In the ‘70s and part of the ‘80s, the brother ran their own business selling and repairing appliances before Bob immersed himself into flying full time.
The aircraft is described as a French-built Socata TBM700, a seven-seater with room for pilot, co-pilot and five passengers. Transport Canada reports that a Socata TBM700 was imported from the United States three weeks ago.
Reany said the aircraft cruises at a speed of more than 300 MPH.
“It has all kinds of navigation equipment and that sort of stuff on board, so it was really outfitted and equipped pretty much like a small airliner would be.”
A search of the U.S. aircraft registry confirmed the plane was exported to Canada from Columbia Aircraft Sales Inc. of Groton, Conn. The plane was new, having been built in June 2012.
The Transportation Safety Board is investigating.
Reany and his wife have no children.
- With files from QMI Agency
An experienced pilot has died after a small plane crashed west of Ottawa near the town of Calabogie Monday afternoon.
The plane’s owner, Lorenzo Girones, identified the pilot as Bob Reany
of Port Elgin, Ont., who was well-known in the flight community.
Reany was training Girones to fly the Socata TBM700 aircraft.
“Wonderful man…he was an excellent pilot,” Girones, a Timmins, Ont. lawyer, told CTV Northern Ontario’s Kari Vierimaa.
“It’s just a tragedy beyond comprehension.”
The aircraft went down shortly after the noon hour in a wooded area between the towns of Calabogie and Griffith, about a two-hour drive west of Ottawa. CTV Ottawa reported that the plane was destroyed on impact.
Girones said he and Reany flew from Goderich, Ont. to Carp earlier Monday and Raeny decided to fly back and spend Thanksgiving with his family. Reany was supposed to return and pick up Girones for his last day of training Tuesday.
Girones said his instructor was an practiced pilot who had logged 26,000 hours of flight time.
The Socata was a “brand new” aircraft, he said, adding that he doesn’t understand what went wrong.
“He spiralled down from 27,000 feet.”
Officers with the OPP’s Renfrew detachment had to approach the crash site on ATVs. The force’s Emergency Response Team searched the wreckage with local officers, as well as officials from the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre.
Jacqueline Allan was with her daughter in the area when the plane went down.
Allan said she heard “a high-pitched whine, kind of like motocross vehicles.”
“It was waxing and waning and then we heard a loud bang,” Allan told CTV Ottawa. “But it was muted, and my daughter thought maybe it was a gunshot.”
Allan said she only learned that a plane had crashed when the owner of a local trailer park told her he had heard reports of a plane going down in the area.
Girones said he’s thankful that he wasn’t aboard the plane when the crash occurred, “but I’m sad that it was (Reany).”
“I’m very concerned about his family and about his wife, with whom he was married for 46 years,” Girones said.
“I’m just sad and my heart goes out to her and his family.”
‘There was debris scattered all over hell’s half acre’
CALABOGIE
— One person is dead after a small plane crashed into a heavily
forested area just west of Calabogie on Thanksgiving Monday.
The aircraft went down in the cottage community more than an hour’s drive west of Ottawa shortly after noon, Ontario Provincial Police said.
Shawn Popkie, the owner of nearby White Pines Resort on Black Donald Lake, put on his coveralls and went up in his plane to try to find the wreckage.
“As soon as we climbed out over the trees you could see the smoke,” he said. “We flew over the site and everything was on fire down there. There was debris scattered all over hell’s half acre.”
The site was still on fire when he found it on foot some time later, he said.
Greg Veldhuizen, who was staying at the lodge at the time, looked up when he heard the plane as flying close to the ground.
“We saw him through the trees making loops, which he did two or three times,” said Veldhuizen. “Then we didn’t see him and we heard an explosion.”
The plane was almost vertical as it headed toward the trees, he said.
Veldhuizen then went into the forest to find the plane. It had been broken into what he estimated was thousands of pieces, none of them bigger than three feet across.
Officers went into the area on all terrain vehicles shortly after the crash took place. An OPP officer was posted at the entrance to a dirt road area off Centennial Lake Road.
Popkie estimated it was about a kilometre off the road.
The scene was being held until investigators with the federal government’s Transportation Safety Board of Canada could arrive. They had not yet determined the cause of the crash.
The plane that crashed was a Socata TBM700, according to a TSB press release. That model carries about six people and has a propeller at the front, the manufacturer’s website said.
The plane was reportedly en route from the Carp Airport to the Goderich Municipal Airport.
A website that tracks small planes after they take off, Flightaware, noted a similar model of plane took off from the Carp Airport on Monday shortly after noon. It was supposed to arrive in Goderich at around 1:30 p.m., but stopped being on radar just west of Ottawa.
At one point it was flying at 26,000 feet, the website said.
The plane’s pilot was from Port Elgin, Ont., north of Goderich, CTV reported. He was not the owner.
Ontario’s air ambulance service initially sent a helicopter to the scene, but that was later cancelled.
The aircraft went down in the cottage community more than an hour’s drive west of Ottawa shortly after noon, Ontario Provincial Police said.
Shawn Popkie, the owner of nearby White Pines Resort on Black Donald Lake, put on his coveralls and went up in his plane to try to find the wreckage.
“As soon as we climbed out over the trees you could see the smoke,” he said. “We flew over the site and everything was on fire down there. There was debris scattered all over hell’s half acre.”
The site was still on fire when he found it on foot some time later, he said.
Greg Veldhuizen, who was staying at the lodge at the time, looked up when he heard the plane as flying close to the ground.
“We saw him through the trees making loops, which he did two or three times,” said Veldhuizen. “Then we didn’t see him and we heard an explosion.”
The plane was almost vertical as it headed toward the trees, he said.
Veldhuizen then went into the forest to find the plane. It had been broken into what he estimated was thousands of pieces, none of them bigger than three feet across.
Officers went into the area on all terrain vehicles shortly after the crash took place. An OPP officer was posted at the entrance to a dirt road area off Centennial Lake Road.
Popkie estimated it was about a kilometre off the road.
The scene was being held until investigators with the federal government’s Transportation Safety Board of Canada could arrive. They had not yet determined the cause of the crash.
The plane that crashed was a Socata TBM700, according to a TSB press release. That model carries about six people and has a propeller at the front, the manufacturer’s website said.
The plane was reportedly en route from the Carp Airport to the Goderich Municipal Airport.
A website that tracks small planes after they take off, Flightaware, noted a similar model of plane took off from the Carp Airport on Monday shortly after noon. It was supposed to arrive in Goderich at around 1:30 p.m., but stopped being on radar just west of Ottawa.
At one point it was flying at 26,000 feet, the website said.
The plane’s pilot was from Port Elgin, Ont., north of Goderich, CTV reported. He was not the owner.
Ontario’s air ambulance service initially sent a helicopter to the scene, but that was later cancelled.
A veteran Ontario pilot was killed when his plane plunged into a wooded area near Calabogie Monday, according to the aircraft's owner.
Ontario police said they were called to the area between Calabogie and Griffith around 12:15 p.m., needing ATVs to get to the scene about three minutes off a nearby trail.
CTV Ottawa's Katie Griffin says a witness told her a plane seemed to be doing aerobatics before she saw an explosion.
"We heard kind of a high-pitched whine, like a motocross vehicle . . .
it was waning and waxing and we heard a loud bang," said Jacqueline
Allan.
Others said they could feel the impact when it hit the ground, rushing to the scene to see it sitting "in a thousand pieces."
Lorenzo Girones, a lawyer in Timmins, said he and 74-year-old Bob Raeny flew from Goderich, Ont. to Carp earlier Monday.
Raeny then left alone to have Thanksgiving dinner with his family in southwestern Ontario before something went wrong.
Ken Bogie of the Goderich arport said the plane was scheduled to land
there around 1:30 p.m. and crashed about 20 minutes after takeoff from
Carp.
CTV Ottawa's Stefan Keyes visited the Carp airport and said it was a six-seater, single-engine Socata.
It was bought Sept. 18 and registered two days later, making its way from Timmins to Goderich, Ont.
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada is sending a team to inspect the scene, about a two hour drive west of downtown Ottawa.
One person is dead after a small plane crashed near Calabogie, Ont., about 120 kilometres west of Ottawa.
The crash happened Monday at about 12:20 p.m. ET between Calabogie and Griffith, Ont., said Ontario Provincial Police spokeswoman Sgt. Kristine Rae.
The crash happened Monday at about 12:20 p.m. ET between Calabogie and Griffith, Ont., said Ontario Provincial Police spokeswoman Sgt. Kristine Rae.
Goderich
Municipal Airport confirmed the six-seat Socata TBM-850 was travelling
from the Carp Airport, west of Ottawa, to Goderich, Ont., in
southwestern Ontario.
The airport confirmed the pilot died. It is not known if the pilot was the plane's owner, who is a lawyer from Goderich who had just bought the plane brand new.
The plane was scheduled to leave Carp at 12:07 p.m. ET and arrive in Goderich at about 1:30 p.m. ET. The plane was on the first leg of a round-trip flight, with three people aboard.
Police confirmed one person had been killed.
ORNGE air ambulance service was asked to send a helicopter from Toronto, but that request was cancelled at about 2:30 p.m. while the helicopter was in the air close to Calabogie.
The airport confirmed the pilot died. It is not known if the pilot was the plane's owner, who is a lawyer from Goderich who had just bought the plane brand new.
The plane was scheduled to leave Carp at 12:07 p.m. ET and arrive in Goderich at about 1:30 p.m. ET. The plane was on the first leg of a round-trip flight, with three people aboard.
Police confirmed one person had been killed.
ORNGE air ambulance service was asked to send a helicopter from Toronto, but that request was cancelled at about 2:30 p.m. while the helicopter was in the air close to Calabogie.
Police officers and paramedics
had to use all-terrain vehicles to reach the crash site, which is in a
heavily-wooded area near Black Donald Lake. Paramedics have since been
released from the crash site.
Marc Allain was at a cottage nearby on the same lake when he said he and his friends heard a loud engine in the sky.
"Someone in our group pointed to the sky and said, 'Look it's a plane up there doing loop-de-loops,'" he told CBC News.
"Then next thing you know we sort of lost it behind the trees and then [there was] a loud explosion sound and then a big, black plume of smoke in the sky."
According to the online flight tracking service FlightAware.com, the plane was travelling at about 27,000 feet at 12:17 p.m., but the next recorded altitude was 5,200 feet just two minutes later.
The Transportation Safety Board is sending two investigators to the crash site to test for safety deficiencies.
Marc Allain was at a cottage nearby on the same lake when he said he and his friends heard a loud engine in the sky.
"Someone in our group pointed to the sky and said, 'Look it's a plane up there doing loop-de-loops,'" he told CBC News.
"Then next thing you know we sort of lost it behind the trees and then [there was] a loud explosion sound and then a big, black plume of smoke in the sky."
According to the online flight tracking service FlightAware.com, the plane was travelling at about 27,000 feet at 12:17 p.m., but the next recorded altitude was 5,200 feet just two minutes later.
The Transportation Safety Board is sending two investigators to the crash site to test for safety deficiencies.
Ontario police say one person is dead after a plane crashed into a wooded area near Calabogie Monday.
They said they were called to the wooded area between Calabogie and Griffith around 12:15 p.m., needing ATVs to get to the scene about three hours off a nearby trail.
An OPP officer on the area police scanner reported multiple times the
plane is "blown apart." CTV Ottawa's Katie Griffin says a witness told
her he saw an explosion around the time the plane went down.
ORNGE officials say there an air ambulance en route has been called off.
CTV Ottawa's Stefan Keyes visited the Carp airport where the plane took
off from and says it was a six-seater, single-engine Socata.
The plane that crashed was bought Sept. 18 and registered two days later, making its way from Timmins to Goderich, Ont. The crash scene is about a two hour drive west of downtown Ottawa.
Published on October 6, 2012
18 knot cross wind landing at Buttonville, Ontario on Saturday, October 6, 2012 in a TBM850 (C-FBKK) on runway 33
Looks like Bob is on the left, Lorenzo as co-pilot.
Looks like Bob is on the left, Lorenzo as co-pilot.
