Yikes! A small plane lost power and crashed on a busy intersection in Saskatoon!
Plane crashes on Wanuskewin Drive; one killed, two in Saskatoon hospital
This is sad.
Apparently, the aircraft is owned by Fugro, a geophysical survey company out
of Ottawa.
That’s a bigger plane than I thought when they said “small plane”. If it lost one engine, shouldn’t it still have been able to make the airport?
Wanuskewin north of 51st is probably the best street in the vicinity to try to use as an emergency runway (though it’s perpendicular to the airport approach which I find a bit odd), but it’s only going to be clear of traffic if northbound traffic has a red light and no one in the eastbound lanes can turn left.
I go through that intersection every day on my way home from work, and in fact made a BBQ Pit traffic rant thread on it once.
I’m originally from Saskatoon. I will be interested to hear the details of what happened. I am sure the pilot did his best, but if problems started 5 kilometers from the city, how do you end up skimming the top of apartment buildings?
5km from the airport, is my understanding, which using the approach they were on would be just coming across the river over Lawson Heights. Though I still don’t understand how you end up landing going north on Wanuskewin rather than west on 51st, so I’m clearly not entirely correct about the flight path.
Crash photos indicate loss of power in starboard engine. (fully feathered). It will be interesting to see what happened. Any word on how far short he was?
Actually, playing around with Google Maps a bit it makes more sense to me.
If you look here, I’ve marked the approximate crash site with the B direction marker. The airport is at the extreme left. If he was lined up on the runway, he would have come west across the river approximately over Pinehouse Dr. He’s losing altitude and reportedly barely makes it over the condos on Cree Place, just SE of the 51st & Wanuskewin intersection. From there, 51st doesn’t really present itself as an option - you’d need to turn right to get over top of 51st, and then left to line up with it - while a little bank to the right lines you right up on the bit of Wanuskewin before it curves more easterly.
On preview, the crash site is about 3km from the end of the runway.
Reviewing the pictures, it looks like both props were fully feathered. Small wonder the crew looked terrified.
I was going to say it looked like some kind of survey plane with the boom sticking out of the tail. I was thinking it was a small twin until I saw the pictures. I’ve been in a twin engine glider before (scud running at night) and the pucker factor is pretty high. Fortunately the pilot got one of the engines restarted quickly. I’d add that the rule of common sense when losing an engine is to climb. Screw the normal glide slope.