Small plane flips over while landing at Parkland Airport
Two aboard aircraft walk away from aviation’s equivalent to a ‘fender bender’
Two men have walked away with only scratches and bruises after the Cessna 140 airplane they were landing flipped over, or “nosed over,” on the runway at Parkland Airport southwest of Edmonton Thursday morning.
Parkland RCMP were called to the airport runway at 8:44 a.m., along with Parkland Fire Services and emergency medical services. Both men were able to power everything off quickly and get out of the aircraft with no serious injury.
They were treated by first responders, but not transported to hospital.
The families of the men involved were very grateful to first responders, a spokesperson who did not want to be named told Postmedia.
The two pilots aren’t the first to have gone tail-over-teakettle in a Cessna.
“It’s similar to a fender bender in the car world,” said Chris Krepski at the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, an independent agency that advances transportation safety by investigating occurrences, including those in the air.
“Either due to aircraft handling or weather or wind, it’s possible that an aircraft might nose over when it’s manoeuvring,” said Krepski. The two-seat, single-engine Cessna aircraft has a tailwheel-type landing gear, with two main wheels forward of the centre of gravity and a small wheel or skid to support the tail.
“In tailwheel aircraft, it happens from time to time,” said Krepski, who added that he could not speculate on exactly why the aircraft flipped.
“He came in from the west, so about a third of the runway down was where the plane had stopped, it wasn’t a matter of he was running out of runway, or anything like that,” said Gerald Morgan, manager of the Edmonton Flying Club, which is based at Parkland Airport. Morgan was one of the first people on the scene.
“Always the first thing is the condition of the pilot and the passenger — they were good, they were fine. After the paramedics came out to check them out, that was our first priority to make sure everyone was OK. Then we assisted in getting the aircraft off the runway,” said Morgan.
“He flew overtop of my place at 8:30 a.m. going west to east and was going to do a circuit,” said Dave Arcand, a neighbour to the airport.
“He did an east end approach and when he did an east end approach I could hear the engine revving, really loud, then I could hear tires screeching, then you could hear metal sliding on pavement,” said Arcand.
The runway is shut down and other aircraft are being diverted to the Villeneuve Airfield. Investigators at the safety board will follow up to gather some additional information, but not investigate further, Krepski said.