One person sustained minor injuries while two others walked away unhurt after a small plane crashed while trying to make a landing at an airport northeast of Calgary.
RCMP says that a plane from La Crete, AB, was attempting to make a landing at Three Hills airport during inclement conditions when it landed short of the runway.
Wonder if it will be another example of someone with lots of money and not enough experience flying one of these fancy flying toys around. Didn't someone recently kill themselves in the same A/C type in Alberta by flying VFR into IFR conditions?
Three people walked away from a plane crash in Three Hills on Tuesday morning.
The plane had departed from the northern Alberta town of La Crete and was approaching its destination of Three Hills Airport at 9:15 a.m.
“They were on their approach to Three Hills and just before they were about to land, they lost visibility for just a couple seconds,” said RCMP Const. Seth Adair.
The landing gear hit the ground about 25 metres short of the runway and the left wing clipped a snowbank, sending the plane bouncing onto the runway.
It came to a rest on the tarmac, but emergency crews had to contend with a fuel leak remove the left wing to extricate the three people aboard the Piper Meridian aircraft.
One of the two passengers suffered minor injuries — chest pain — in the collision. The pilot was uninjured.
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada has been notified.
RCMP say no charges have been laid.
“There was nothing (criminal). It was just weather related,” said Adair.
There was a blowing snow warning all morning, and the wind was pretty strong at 9:15 so you would naturally expect conditions to be pretty bad out on the prairie. I wouldn't have wanted to drive out there never mind fly.
Picture in original post is very deceptive. Weather at time of crash was very bad, you'd be lucky to see the length of the 3000' runway with strong winds. Also, the left wing was removed with jaws of life.
I find it curious that they had to cut the wing off to extract the people. I can only surmise that it was folded back blocking the door. Is there not an emergency exit on the right side?
It looks like this pic was taken shortly after the crash, and gives a better idea of the conditions:
I don't understand why they just didn't wait a few hours - by 11 or 12 there were clear blue skies over the entire of southern Alberta. I'm pretty sure there's nothing in Three Hills that is that urgent.
Inverted2 wrote: Didn't someone recently kill themselves in the same A/C type in Alberta by flying VFR into IFR conditions?
Yes they did, hence my previous comment. In fact the previous fellow crashed in La Crete, where theis guy was flying in from. Same type of accident, AFAIK there's no IFR approach at Three Hills just like there isn't one at La Crete. One almost wonders if they guys were related somewhow.
CpnCrunch wrote:It looks like this pic was taken shortly after the crash, and gives a better idea of the conditions:
I don't understand why they just didn't wait a few hours - by 11 or 12 there were clear blue skies over the entire of southern Alberta. I'm pretty sure there's nothing in Three Hills that is that urgent.
Especially since it was clearer the farther south you went earlier. CYYC would have been more than accessable at the time of the crash, and is what, 15 min away at most flying in this aircraft?
The things that make biz people so successful is often their achilles heel in flying. The words NO or Can't does not exsist in their lexicon.
I was very sad to see the demise of c-gmhp I have 25hours flying it, the owner and I parted company over a different issue in september.
The aircraft is owned by a private company with 3 partners all are good folks.
Back in the day when i was flying pc12 mgt always knew that it would take a good summer season dealing with t- storms and a winter season dealing with nasty winter wx before, they would upgrade a quality f/o to captain , the reason was experience ya have see enough real world situations. mgt would ask the senior captn's is he /she ready and in almost all cases the anwser would be Yes. So the f/o that started in april would usually have a quick upgrade because by feb the following year they had seen the bulk of mother natures surprizes .
The point is this was the first winter for c-gmhp and the pilot and being single pilot /ifr is more demanding so taking it easy is a good idea the first year. Fly safe winter is not done yet
Owner /pilot 13 year exp / approx 2,700tt and current on type 300 hours with sim training within last 6 months
As mentioned in my previous post the achillies heal for successful biz owners when comes to owner flown aircraft> the word can't or no, It was a sweet little aircraft to fly kept up to the big boys and sips 260pnds an hour up high
the achillies heal for successful biz owners when comes to owner flown aircraft> the word can't or no
I hate to say it, but the refusal to understand that the world can't always be bent to your favour by pushing harder isn't a hallmark of a successful business owner, but rather that of someone running a confidence game that's going to collapse sometime on them, occasionally unfortunately with their own deaths. Run into tons of these guys, had the misfortune to work for a few (thinking back to my first flying job). Always seem like great guys until you might be between what they want. Some get away with running a high level of risk for a long time, some even get away with making someone else pay the price.
Like a lot of aviation related safety issues, people like to turn a blind eye to this sort of individual. Not sure why. I dare say this sort of behavior is encouraged. Look at a lot of ads for land-developer killer airplanes these days. You see stuff like "when can't isn't an option" and a spiel about important business meetings. Sort of leaves you with a sick feeling when you know these guys are going to have passengers, like this one.
2700 total time is a good amount. That's more than 200 hours per year over 13 years, which is enought to keep anybody current. For every airplane that has an accident there are thousands that don't. Perhaps before stoning this fellow we should wait until the report comes out? Maybe he was going somewhere else, and the pilot or a passenger had a medical problem, and they had to land? Maybe, there was a mechanical issue with the airplane forcing a landing
They filed an IFR flight plan to Three Hills and flew a direct track. There was a blowing snow advisory for Three Hills at the time (all morning in fact).
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Last edited by CpnCrunch on Fri Feb 01, 2013 2:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
CPN CRUNCH to correct you on some facts
1/ same group of pilots is false /truth only accident pilot of this aircraft gmhp is pilot of the 3 owners
2/ C-GWEI in november was owned by a different group of and the pilot of wei was the only pilot of those owners
please refrain from inaccurate statements.when people have died
1000 HP wrote:2700 total time is a good amount. That's more than 200 hours per year over 13 years, which is enought to keep anybody current.
Depends. Most of the guys who fly these types of machines fly the same routes to the same places all the time. Anywhere outside their usual habits beceoms scary, which makes one wonder how often they've been to Three Hills. Its easy to rack up a lot of hours and not do a lot of flying if you catch my drift.
Regarding ownership: it looks like GMHP is registered to the same address as the GM of Noralta Aviation, and GWEI is registered to Ernie's address. So I'm guessing the pilot on GMHP was a Noralta pilot and not a private owner.