Efforts to ward off deer fail at remote airfield

At the remote aerodrome beside an oilfield in Alberta, staff drive up and down the runway blowing an airhorn, warning that a plane is about to land.

For about a decade, the exercise has been successful in warding off any creatures fixing to make a run from the shrubs on one side to the shrubs on the other.

On Tuesday afternoon, however, three deer did not heed the horn. A Dash 8 aircraft from Sun West Aviation was landing, bringing passengers for a shift change at the MEG Energy oil facility beside the aerodrome at Christina Lake, about 150 kilometres south of Fort McMurray.

Unlike a city airport, the aerodrome has no fence, nothing to keep animals out.

The plane hit the dirt runway and started braking. It was going about 110 kilometres per hour when the first deer bolted forward. The two others followed.

“They were probably trying to transit from one clump of bushes to the other,” said Mike Gocal, the chief operating officer of Sunwest Aviation, which operates the charter plane. “That’s speculation. Who knows what goes through a deer’s mind.”

On board, the 43 passengers and four crew felt as though the plane had hit a “speed bump,” Gocal said.

The first deer made it through unharmed. Its two companions hit the plane’s propeller, fuselage and the covering on the landing gear. Neither survived.

RCMP Cpl. Teri-Ann Deobald had few details on the two deer. “From the photographs,” she said, “I can tell you one was a doe and, unfortunately, I can’t tell you what the other one was because there’s not much left.

“Planes hitting wildlife is extremely rare,” she said.

“Obviously this is an unprecedented event for us too,” said Davis Sheremata, a spokesman for MEG Energy, which runs the aerodrome. “We were really saddened by it.”

MEG Energy shut down the aerodrome for more than 24 hours as Transportation Safety Board officials conducted an investigation.