Pilot’s approach culprit in Lapierre’s death
Transportation Safety Board releases report on air crash that claimed 7 lives in 2016
OTTAWA— Pilot Pascal Gosselin was behind the plane. Way behind.
Nearing the airport at Îles-de-la-Madeleine in bad weather, he had misjudged his approach and now his Mitsubishi MU-2B-60, a high-performance twin-engine turboprop aircraft, was high and fast, as much as 185 km/h too fast, just a few kilometres back from the runway.
Riding in the cabin behind him were Jean Lapierre, a former federal cabinet minister and four family members. They were flying to Lapierre’s hometown for the funeral of his father.
Gosselin pulled the engines to idle in an attempt to slow down. The plane “meandered” across the approach path. He was behind in his landing checks. And then the plane became critically slow. Apparently startled by the decaying speed, Gosselin jammed the throttles forward. The sudden burst of power caused the plane to suddenly roll out of control to the right in a sharp descent.
He got the wings level but did not have enough time to arrest the plane’s descent before it slammed into the ground, killing all onboard.
Gosselin’s decision to push on with an unstable approach that was high, fast and rushed was a key factor in the March 29, 2016 crash, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada said in a report released Wednesday.
“He was behind the airplane. With a high performance aircraft, it’s flying fast and pilots have to think faster to stay ahead of the airplane,” Kathy Fox, chairperson of the safety board, told the Star on Wednesday.
The flight had departed Montreal’s St. Hubert airport. Onboard with Lapierre — a high-profile Quebecer who had been a long-time member of Parliament, cabinet minister and journalist — were his wife, Nicole Beaulieu, sister, Martine Lapierre and two brothers, Marc and Louis Lapierre. Pilot Fabrice Labourel accompanied Gosselin in the cockpit though he had no experience on the MU-2B.
Gosselin, a personal friend of the former federal cabinet minister, had offered to fly the family to the remote Quebec island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, reports at the time said.
Weather in the region was poor with high winds, low cloud and poor visibility. The plane made an instrument approach to the airport, using electronic aids to navigate.
Though high and fast, the pilot tried to salvage the landing rather than abandon it and try again — as investigators suggest he should have done.
“The pilot’s high workload and reduced time available resulted in a task-saturated condition, which decreased his situational awareness and impaired his decision making,” the report found.
“The pilot ‘got behind’ the aircraft by allowing events to control his actions, and cognitive biases led him to continue the unstable approach,” it said.
The pilots never discussed the possibility of going around.
The report discusses the various pressures that too often cause pilots to press ahead with a bad approach rather than go-around and try again, such as tunnel vision, overconfidence and a reluctance to change plans.
“We know that very, very experienced commercial flight crews who fly a lot more can find themselves . . . on an unstable approach and continue to landing because it’s already worked before . . . and they wind up having an accident,” Fox said.
A spate of fatal accidents involving MU-2B aircraft prompted the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration to require pilots of these planes to get special training. Gosselin had received the training but only had 125 hours on the aircraft, and had flown just 20 hours in the previous 90 days, Fox said.