Six deaths could have been avoided

Photo courtesy TSB
The plane crashed in a mountain of Tadoussac in August 2015.

Stephanie Gendron

Thursday, September 7, 2017 12:52

UPDATE
Thursday, September 7, 2017 19:23

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TADOUSSAC | The crash of a seaplane Air Saguenay, which has six deaths at Tadoussac in 2015 could have been avoided if the camera had been fitted with a warning system stall.

On the 23rd of August 2015, the experienced driver Romain Desrosiers and his passengers, five French tourists, and britons, were killed when the Air Saguenay flew into a mountain at Tadoussac.

The Office of the transportation safety board of Canada (TSB) recommended on Thursday that all aircraft type de Havilland DHC-2 operated in commercial activities may be equipped with a warning system stall.

Photo courtesy

Roman Desrosiers, the pilot of the floatplane that crashed in the north of Tadoussac in August 2015.

To see it better

The pilot had carried out a turn at low altitude so that passengers can better admire possibly a family of bears or moose.

“The device has stalled in a turn at high inclination and is passed in a vertical descent before the aircraft struck the ground “, concluded Pierre Gavillet, head of the TSB investigation.

Photo courtesy TSB

The device plays under investigation.

The stall occurred because the wings of the plane were not generating enough lift. As one wing stalled before the other, the device started to turn.

“The driver stopped the rotation, and the camera was in the vertical, nose-down. The driver must bring the horizontal position, but it ran out of space in this case “, said Pierre Gavillet.

Photo courtesy TSB

The unit stalled in a turn at high inclination and is passed by vertical descent before it hit the ground.

System expensive

He recalled that a stall does not necessarily lead to an accident, because the pilot can control his aircraft if it does not fly too close to the ground.

“The pilot was experienced. If he had had a fair warning before the stall, it would have been able to take measures to prevent that from happening, ” says mr. Gavillet.

A warning system stall costs approximately $ 12 000. It would cost about $ 150,000 to Air Saguenay, the operator involved, if the systems become mandatory, for its 12 Beavers.

“With this device, there are a lot of signs that there will be a stall. Unfortunately, in this particular case, with a slope of 50 to 60 degrees, and even a stall warning would not have made the difference. It is still in the realm of the hypothetical, ” says Jean Tremblay, Air Saguenay.

Maneuvers

Following the accident, Air Saguenay has required that all drivers do more turns more than 30 degrees of inclination.

In its report, the TSB also recalled a recommendation of 2013, to facilitate the installation of systems to record flight data to facilitate the monitoring of the operators.

It would oversee and monitor the operations of tourist flights, including those at low altitude, “maneuvers that are not needed during this type of flight,” wrote the investigator in his report.

Since 1998, thirteen accidents resulting in 37 deaths have been caused by a stall on the aircraft type Beaver.