10 Killed in Caravan Crash

[BobSmith_av8r]

10 believed dead in small plane crash: airline

CTV.ca News Staff

Updated: Sat. Jan. 17 2004 11:55 PM ET

The president of an airline whose plane crashed into Lake Erie Saturday said it appears no one has survived the accident -- one that has likely killed 10 people.

"It was not an extraordinary flight," Paul Mulrooney of Georgian Express told The Canadian Press. "The airplane was certainly equipped for those conditions. It was just a normal winter day."

Snow, freezing rain and low clouds were reportedly hampering search efforts. The U.S. Coast Guard helicopter which discovered the crash site reportedly had to hover just 15 metres above the lake in order to be below the clouds.

Two Canadian rescue helicopters dispatched from CFB Trenton, roughly 450 kilometres away from the crash scene, couldn't reach the site because of heavy snowfall.

There were eight passengers and one pilot listed for the flight, but Mulrooney said an extra passenger may have slipped on board at the last minute.

The airline, which is based in Mississauga, operates three flights per day between Pelee Island, located towards the western end of Lake Erie, and Windsor. A normal flight is about 30 minutes. Mulrooney said the Toronto-based pilot of this tragic flight was an experienced aviator who had flown the route many times.

The U.S. Coast Guard made the discovery of the Georgian Express Cessna 208 Caravan single-engine aircraft, which was found nose-down in the water, around 7 p.m. ET.

That journey would normally take about 30 minutes. The aircraft left around 4:30 p.m. ET and never arrived. Air traffic controllers say they got a frantic message from the aircraft and then heard nothing.

When the situation became known, two U.S. Coast Guard helicopters were dispatched from Detroit.

Both a Canadian coast guard ship and a U.S. Coast Guard cutter, which had been doing some ice-breaking duty, were expected to arrive at the scene sometime Saturday night.

"We really don't expect to get some really concrete news certainly until at least daybreak, until we get some daylight in there and have the vessels in there," John Leclerc of the Canadian search and rescue co-ordination centre at CFB Trenton told The Canadian Press.

The debris field from the crash appeared to be extensive, he said.

Of the eight confirmed passengers, police said four were from Chatham, two were from Windsor and two others were from Kingville. All were men. Authorities are attempting to notify the victims' families.

Transport Canada and the Transportation Safety Board were investigating.

 

[BobSmith_av8r]

Passenger feared icy conditions

By GLORIA GALLOWAY AND JOE FRIESEN
Monday, January 19, 2004 - Page A1



TORONTO and KINGSVILLE, ONT. -- Larry Janik was apparently nervous as he and seven friends prepared to board the Cessna Caravan that would take them back to the mainland after two days of hunting on Pelee Island.

There was ice on the wings of the turbo-prop plane and he asked aloud whether they should be braving the trip under such conditions.

But Caravans are workhorses, and are equipped to handle ice. So Mr. Janik's reservations, which were overheard by Ford Crawford, the island resident who had taken the eight men hunting before dropping them at the small airport, were not shared by pilot Wayne Price.

Minutes later the plane was in the sky. Then came a frantic call for help from inside the aircraft before it crashed into the ice of Lake Erie, skidding a long way before breaking through and sinking eight metres below the surface of the frigid water.

An hour after the plane went down in the late hours of Saturday afternoon, the phone at Mr. Janik's home in Kingsville, Ont., about 40 kilometres from Windsor, rang.

A friend had seen reports about the crash on the 6 p.m. news and wanted to check with his wife, Cheryl, to make sure all was well.

"She had heard about this small plane going down and didn't even know that my husband was over on Pelee Island," Ms. Janik, 47, said yesterday.

"She asked where he was and I said 'over there.' And she flipped out on me and I flipped out on her. And then I called over to Pelee Island to the place that they were staying and they said they had got on the plane."

Mr. Crawford wasn't taking calls from the media yesterday. But he told Ms. Janik about the fears he had heard voiced by her husband.

In a sense, Larry Janik was just following his wife's orders. She was still in bed when he got up Friday morning to catch the plane from nearby Windsor to the island for two days of rabbit and pheasant hunting. "I said 'be careful,' like I always do," she said.

Police arrived at her door at 8 p.m. on Saturday to confirm what she already knew. Her 49-year-old husband -- "a great dad," a workaholic who spent 16 hours a day at his refrigeration business, and a man who loved to hunt -- was gone.

The Pelee Island hunt is something Mr. Janik and his friends do every January. Last year they spent two nights on the small chunk of land. "Nothing would keep him from going," said Ms. Janik.

Mr. Janik was well known and well liked in this Lake Erie community of 19,000 -- something that was underlined by the constant stream of people who filed into their home yesterday, bringing food to comfort Ms. Janik and her two red-eyed children, 12-year-old Ian and 14-year-old Kaitlyn.

Similar gatherings were held at homes of the other lost hunters, all of whom lived in southwestern Ontario. The men who perished along with Mr. Janik included Fred Freitas, 39, of Kingsville, brothers Ted Reeve, 54, and Tom Reeve, 50, and Robert Brisco, 47, all of Chatham; Ronald Spencler, 54, and Walter Sadowski, 49, both of Windsor and Jim Allen, 52, of Mitchell's Bay.

Mr. Price, 33, was from Richmond Hill. The 10th person who died, 28-year-old Jamie Levine, was from Los Angeles. She is believed to have been Mr. Price's girlfriend.

Rob Reeve, the son of Ted Reeve, said his father loved to hunt.

"They all did," said Mr. Reeve.

His dad, described by his son as a "caring, hard-working, loving man," was a police officer. That's why it was Carl Herder, chief of the Chatham-Kent police, who arrived in person Saturday night to deliver the bad news. Chief Herder held a news conference yesterday and was overcome with emotion as he talked about the friend he had lost.

Tim Brisco, whose brother Robert was one of the victims, knew all of the Chatham men well.

"I grew up around the corner from Ted and Tom Reeve," he said yesterday, "and all four of them were fine men who have given a lot to the community."

Jim Allen, for instance, was an orthopedic surgeon who operated on Tim Brisco's knee. "He was well known." said Mr. Brisco. "If you had knee or hip or ankle problems you couldn't do better. The London people get referred to Jim Allen here in Chatham."

The other men devoted time to improving environmentally sensitive areas around their city, said Mr. Briscoe.

His brother, Bob, was a real-estate agent who was the father of four grown children.

"Ted [Reeve] did some of the conservation things that my brother Bob was also interested in," he said. "They did a lot through Ducks Unlimited and with wetlands management and have been involved with Canada Wildlife Agency. Different wetlands owe a lot to both of those guys."

Gerald Gemus, the owner of the Gemus Hunting Lodge on Pelee Island, said he had heard a lot about the men who died in the day since the plane went down. They are guys who like to fish in the summer and hunt in the winter, he said.

Pelee Island holds a pheasant hunt in January and February to help supplement the income for some of the islanders. Most people, said Mr. Gemus, go out in the morning and return the same day. Mr. Crawford "has a nice little setup."

Mr. Gemus had planned to take the plane to the island on Saturday to check on his property, and to return on the doomed flight, but he was running late and decided against it. There were 10 people on the Caravan - so perhaps he would have been turned away. Or perhaps Ms. Levine would have stayed behind.

Mr. Gemus will never know. But it is a flight he's glad he missed.

"The Good Lord," he said "must have been watching over me."

The victims

Ten lives were lost in the crash. Not shown are the pilot, Wayne Price, and a friend, Jamie Levine.

Jim Allan, 52, Mitchell's Bay, Ont.

Robert Brisco, 47, of Chatham, Ont.

Fred Freitas, 39, of Kingsville, Ont.

Larry Janik, 49, of Kingsville

Ted Reeve, 54, of Chatham

Tom Reeve, 50, Ted's brothr, also of Chatham.

Walter, Sadowski, 49, of Windsor

Ronald Spencier, 54, also of Windsor

 

[Astra Guy]

This was sure a sad event. The more I hear and read about this accident the more I believe that the pilot took off with his aircraft iced over. Another pilot induced crash that took away lives. Whether his deicing boots were working or not is moot. They can't remove ice from the tops of the wings, horizontal stab or fuselage.

Yesterday I heard of a pilot from one of the fractionals flying a Hawker asked a lineman to pour water over his iced over wings and tail to remove the ice. The lineman refused, which is a good thing. The pilot grabbed the pail and did it himself. All to aviod paying a deicing fee. What a bozo! Can you imagine where all that water goes when it rolls off the wings and stab?

Get smart boys and girls....play it on the safe side when you are iced up on the ground. Get deiced, get in a heated hangar for a while or don't fly! Flying 101!

 

[Valkyrie]

There were 16 losses of Fedex Caravans.

It looks like this type of single pilot operation (regular flights) is not very good for Caravan safety statistics.

 

[MJG]

Unfortunately when there's just one pilot there's no one else to say "I don't feel comfortable about doing this" except for that little voice in your head which is very easy to ignore. Very sad indeed.

Weather was terrible that day.

 

[metrodriver]

recently on caravanpilot.com: frost induced crash at CVG in december, pilot survived. Also in october a deadly crash in cody, Wyoming in ice. 3 this winter, at least 2 pilot induced (not getting deiced), not a good record

 

[Astra Guy]

That little voice

We all need to listen to that little voice. If it doesn't seem right or feel right then stop and think.

I can remember many years ago flying a Huey in the dark climbing out over a mountain, which I could not see. I did not have the terrain map directly in front of me. I started to feel uneasy with what clearance I may have. I did a 360 climbing turn to an altitude that I knew would clear that mountain. Upon landing I checked the map and sure enough I might have impacted 100' short of the peak. Spooky stuff, really. As the saying goes, "I learned about flying from that."

 

[ShinerBocknabtl]

The Caravan does not like ice...or even frost for that matter. You've got boots on the wings, struts, landing gear, tail surfaces, and the front of the cargo pod. Prop anti-ice, windshield anti-ice, pitot/static and stall vane heat. Sounds like it's really built for a blizzard but in reality you've got a plane that's built to haul a hell of a load at 150kt and it takes most available power to do that.

Add the two factors of lots of induced and parasite drag and always operating right at max. gross weight then start adding ice on top of it, recipe for a bad day. I wasn't in any of the planes that crashed nor was I the investigator so I can't say exactly what went wrong but I can say that I've bumped freight or just stayed on the ground and I'm still here to talk about it. Best of luck to all the van drivers out there.