High court agrees to hear RCMP perjury appeals around airport stun-gun death

HALIFAX — Federal investigators say approach procedures, poor visibility and lighting issues led to the 2015 crash landing of an Air Canada jet that skidded along a Halifax runway and injured 25 people on board.

The Transportation Safety Board report says the crew aboard Flight 624 had set the autopilot at the correct angle of descent during a March 29, 2015, blizzard, but they did not notice wind had pushed the plane off its flight path.

The report says the crew requested that runway lights at Halifax Stanfield International Airport be adjusted to their maximum setting, but the tower controller was “preoccupied” with snowplows on the runway and nearby aircraft on the taxiway.

“When the aircraft reached the minimum descent altitude for the approach, the flight crew saw some lights, which they interpreted as sufficient visual cues to continue the approach below the minimum descent altitude, expecting the lights to become more visible as they got closer to the airport,” the TSB says.

The report says “many factors” caused the crash.

The flight crew was slow in recognizing the plane was too low because of “plan continuation bias.” Air Canada procedures did not require the flight crew to monitor the aircraft’s altitude and distance to the runway, the TSB says.

“It was only in the last few seconds of the flight, after the pilots disengaged the autopilot to land manually, that they then realized that the aircraft was too low and too far back. Although they initiated a go-around immediately, the aircraft struck terrain short of the runway,” it says.

The plane bounced into the air and crashed near the runway threshold before careening along the tarmac. An engine and the plane’s landing gear were ripped from the airframe amid a shower of sparks and leaking fuel.

The plane was “destroyed,” the TSB says.

The TSB says that during the crash landing, the captain’s head struck the glare shield, while the first officer suffered serious damage to the right eye when he struck the glare shield, because their shoulder harnesses never locked in.

It noted a flight attendant was injured by a coffee maker that came free of its base because its locking system was not correctly engaged.

“Because no emergency was expected, the passengers and cabin crew were not in a brace position at the time of the initial impact,” the report says. “Most of the injuries sustained by the passengers were consistent with not adopting a brace position.”

VANCOUVER — Two men convicted of perjury in connection with a notorious stun-gun encounter at Vancouver’s airport will have their appeals heard by the Supreme Court of Canada.

The court announced Thursday in Ottawa that it would hear appeals from Const. Kwesi Millington and former corporal Benjamin (Monty) Robinson. As is customary, the court gave no reasons for its decision to hear the cases.

Millington was sentenced to 30 months in prison for testimony he gave to an inquiry examining the October 2007 death of Robert Dziekanski, who was jolted several times with a Taser at in the arrivals area of the airport.

Robinson was sentenced to two years less a day, one year of probation and 240 hours of community service.

They were found guilty of colluding to make up testimony, but the two other officers with them that night were acquitted of the same allegations in separate trials.

Glen Orris, the lawyer for Millington, said Thursday that the decision from the Supreme Court is his client’s first break in the decade-old case.

“Theyobviouslywantedtohearthe argument that we are advancing, that the verdict basically was unfair and not based on the evidence,” he said in an interview from Vancouver

Orris said the high court has set a tentative date of Oct. 30 for the appeal.

Dziekanski’s mother said in a telephone interview from her home in Kamloops, B.C., that the decision wasn’t what she wanted to hear.

“I just want this to be over and done with, then I could cherish the memories still,” she said. “I don’t think I could ever let go ... but I try my best, I keep myself busy.”

She said the news was especially difficult just days after Mother’s Day.

She said in the six years she and her son were separated while she was living in Canada and he was in Poland, he would always call her on Mother’s Day.

“It is very hard for me,” she said, crying. “Even after 10 years almost, he’s gone and there is no justice for my son.”

A bystander’s video played at the public inquiry and viewed millions of times on social media showed four RCMP officers approaching a troubled Dziekanski at the airport and within minutes he was jolted and lay dead on the floor.

The officers told the inquiry they perceived Dziekanski as a threat when he picked up a stapler.

The inquiry’s commissioner, Thomas Braidwood, said in his 470-page report that the officers approached the scene as if they were responding to a “barroom brawl.”

He said they failed to reassess the situation when it became clear they were dealing with a distraught traveller who didn’t speak English, rather than the drunk, violent man they’d anticipated.

Millington, who fired the Taser, and Robinson, who was the senior officer at the scene, were found guilty of colluding to make up testimony presented at the inquiry.

The British Columbia Court of Appeal upheld the perjury convictions of both men.