Pilot in deadly Quebec crash ‘very safe,’ friend says
‘He was in the plane with them and he wouldn’t put his life in jeopardy’
MONTREAL— The pilot of the plane that crashed in eastern Quebec was a personal friend of former federal cabinet minister Jean Lapierre — one of the seven people on board who were killed in the accident.
The family of pilot Pascal Gosselin on Wednesday expressed its condolences and grief over the tragedy, which occurred as Gosselin and copilot Fabrice Labourel were attempting to land at Îles-de-la-Madeleine airport Tuesday before noon.
Gosselin’s family said in a statement it had “maintained a deep tie of friendship” with Lapierre’s family. Also killed in the crash were Lapierre’s wife, Nicole Beaulieu, his sister, Martine Lapierre, and his two brothers, Marc and Louis Lapierre.
“The family is devastated,” the family statement said. “It cannot explain the unexplainable. Right now, everyone is hoping for answers that will unfortunately not arrive today. That’s why the family is co-operating entirely with the investigations of the Transportation Safety Board and the Sûreté du Québec.”
There were few new details about the cause of the crash, but it was revealed that Gosselin had offered to fly the Lapierre family from the StHubert airport south of Montreal to the remote Quebec island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence on Tuesday morning.
The Lapierres were returning to their birthplace to attend the funeral of their 83-year-old father, who had been suffering from Parkinson’s disease.
“He (Lapierre) told me that his friend had offered to take them back to the island to get there sooner to organize the funeral of their father,” Paul Larocque, who co-hosted a political television show with Lapierre said on the TVA network Tuesday night.
“Jean wanted to get there as quickly as possible to help his mother organize the funeral and the burial, so he got everyone together. It was him paying for the plane.”
A friend of the pilot, Chrystian Guy, said in an interview that Gosselin was planning to buy the plane he was flying from its American owner. He had asked Fabrice Labourel to come along as a co-pilot because they were expecting high winds and he wanted someone who was familiar with the island airport, Guy said.
“Pascal is very safe. I’ve driven to Quebec City with him — it took three hours,” Guy said. “He doesn’t take chances. He’s a father of three kids. He was in the plane with them and he wouldn’t put his life in jeopardy.”
Gosselin ran Aéro Teknic Inc., a company that specializes in aircraft maintenance and modifications.
Labourel was an instructor at a flight school that operates out of the St-Hubert airport.
Interview requests made to Aéro Teknic Inc., and Labourel’s employer, Centre Pluridisciplinaire d’Aviation du Québec, were declined Wednesday.
Originally from France, Labourel moved to Canada in 2011 to realize his dream of becoming a pilot, according to a work summary on his personal LinkedIn page. He trained as a pilot on evenings and weekends, eventually obtaining his licence as a commercial pilot, to fly multi-engine aircraft and to be a flight instructor. He had been teaching new pilots full time since last June.
Lt. Martine Asselin, a spokeswoman with Sûreté du Québec, said the force is conducting a criminal investigation into the circumstances surrounding the deadly crash. Offi- cers have secured the site — a field in a residential area about three kilometres from the airport — and are also questioning witnesses as well as those who may have interacted with the victims or the airplane before it left the St-Hubert airport.
The Transportation Safety Board has also started its probe of the crash after the arrival of investigators was delayed by a snowstorm and high winds on the island.
Mike Cunningham, the investigator in charge of the TSB probe, said his team is documenting the crash site and inspecting the wreckage to see what might have caused the accident.
A second phase of the investigation will involve transporting the entire wreck back to the laboratory in Ottawa for additional testing.