Officials have called off efforts to recover the bodies of three Canadians after a plane crash in Antarctica, saying it would be unsafe to further disturb the wreckage.
One of the agencies investigating the deadly crash says poor winter weather will delay the recovery operation until the next Antarctic research season, which coincides with the polar region’s period of 24-hour sunlight.
Peter West of the U.S. National Science Foundation says rescue crews have retrieved some equipment from the Twin Otter aircraft, which is largely embedded in steep slope near the summit of Mount Elizabeth on the Queen Alexandra range
Among those items is the cockpit voice recorder, a tool that should help aviation authorities learn more about what caused the plane to go down.
The New Zealand Rescue Co-Ordination Centre has said the aircraft appears to have been on course but may have turned too early while flying through a mountain range.
The plane is operated by Calgary-based Kenn Borek Air and was reported missing after it failed to reach its destination on Wednesday.
The pilot has been identified by friends as Bob Heath of Inuvik while media reports have identified a second crew member as Mike Denton, a newlywed from Calgary whose photographs of planes appear on the Kenn Borek website.
The third crew member has not been identified.
The Transportation Safety Board said that since the Twin Otter was operated by a Canadian company, officials here have already started working on a probe into the crash.
Spokeswoman Julie Leroux said Canadian investigators have collected data and conducted interviews, but it may not be possible for them to reach the remote crash site.
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Terrain awareness and warning systems help save lives.Six months ago Denis Lebel, Minister of Transport announced new regulations require private turbine-powered and commercial airplanes with six or more passenger seats to be equipped with an alert system known as the “terrain awareness and warning system” to improve aviation safety in Canada.
The system provides acoustic and visual alerts to flight crews when the path of their aircraft is likely to collide with terrain, water or obstacles — a situation that can happen when visibility is low or the weather is poor. This gives the flight crew enough time to take evasive action. The new regulations significantly increase safety for small aircraft, which fly into remote wilderness or mountainous areas where the danger of flying into terrain is highest. Under the new regulations, operators will have two years to equip their airplanes with terrain awareness and warning system. The regulations comply with the International Civil Aviation Organization’s standards and bring Canadian regulations closer to those of other aviation authorities, including the United States and European Union. Canada’s Transportation Safety Board also recommends the wider use of terrain awareness and warning system to help pilots assess their proximity to terrain.
Controlled flight into terrain is a leading cause of aviation accidents involving the loss of life, causing over 9,000 deaths since the beginning of the commercial jet age. Controlled flight into terrain was identified as a cause of 25% of US Air Force Class A Mishaps between 1993 and 2002. While there are many reasons why a plane might crash into terrain, including bad weather and navigation equipment problems, it is claimed that pilot error is the single biggest factor leading to a Controlled flight into terrain incident. Even highly experienced professionals may commit controlled flight into terrain due to fatigue, loss of situational awareness, or disorientation. Controlled flight into terrain is considered to be caused by spatial disorientation, where the pilot does not correctly perceive the position and orientation with respect to the Earth’s surface. The incidents often involve a collision with terrain such as hills or mountains, and may occur in conditions of clouds or otherwise reduced visibility. Controlled flight into terrain may be associated with subtle equipment malfunctions. If the malfunction occurs in a piece of navigational equipment and it is not detected by the crew, it may mislead the crew into improperly guiding the aircraft despite other information received from all properly functioning equipment, or despite clear sky visibility that should have allowed the crew to easily notice ground proximity.
Some pilots, convinced that advanced electronic navigation systems coupled with flight management system computers, or over-reliance on them, are partially responsible for these accidents, have called computerized flight into terrain
Traditionally adequate procedures and crew coordination and communication as well as control or surveillance by air traffic services may reduce the likelihood of controlled flight into terrain. In order to prevent the occurrence of controlled flight into terrain accidents, manufacturers and safety regulators developed terrain awareness and warning systems. The first generation of these terrain awareness and warning systems is known as a ground proximity warning system which uses a radar altimeter to assist in calculating terrain closure rates. This system has now been further improved with the addition of a GPS terrain database and is known as an enhanced ground proximity warning system. This and the older system have mandatory pilot procedures and actions following any caution or warning event. Smaller aircraft often use a GPS database of terrain to provide terrain warning. The GPS database contains a database of nearby terrain and will present terrain that is near the aircraft in red or yellow depending on its distance from the aircraft.
Statistics show that aircraft fitted with a second-generation enhanced ground proximity warning system have not suffered a controlled flight into terrain accident if terrain awareness and warning systems or enhanced ground proximity warning system are properly handled.