Air Ontario Flight 1363

Air Ontario Flight 1363
Accident summary
Accident type	Crash due to lack of de-icing
place	Dryden , Ontario , Canada
date	March 10, 1989
Fatalities	24 (21 passengers, 3 crew members)
Survivors	45
Injured	45
Aircraft
Aircraft type	Fokker F28 Fellowship
operator	Air Ontario
Mark	C-FONF
Departure airport	Thunder Bay International Airport
Stopover	Dryden Regional Airport
Destination airport	Winnipeg Airport
Passengers	65
crew	4th
	Lists of aviation accidents

Air Ontario Flight 1363 was a scheduled Air Ontario passenger flight that crashed near Dryden , Ontario on March 10, 1989 shortly after taking off from Dryden Regional Airport. The plane was a Fokker F28 Fellowship . Because of too much ice and snow on the wings, the machine could not reach enough height, brushed trees behind the runway and crashed after just 49 seconds. The flight was en route from Thunder Bay to Winnipeg with a stopover in Dryden, where the plane crashed shortly after take-off. The accident claimed the lives of 21 of the 65 passengers and 3 of the 4 crew members on board, including the two pilots.

A similar accident happened in 1992 when a USAir Fokker F28-4000 crashed in Flushing Bay while taking off at New York 's LaGuardia Airport after ice accumulated on the wings while it was taxiing.

Plane and crew

The Fokker F28-1000 was manufactured in 1972 and has been in service since 1973. The aircraft has been in use by Air Ontario since November 1987. It was one of two F28-1000s operated by the airline.

The flight was under the command of George John Morwood, 52. He was an experienced captain who had flown for about 34 years and had completed around 24,100 hours of flight. His first officer was Keith Mills, 35. Mills was also a skilled pilot, having had more than 10,000 hours of flight time. Both pilots were new to the F28-1000 and had less than 150 hours on this type of aircraft.

The flight attendants Katherine Say and Sonia Hartwick were employed in the cabin. Say had worked for Air Ontario, Hartwick two and a half for ten years - she survived as the only member of the crew.

Investigations

The investigation found that the unusable auxiliary power unit (APU) and the lack of an external generator at Dryden Regional Airport contributed to the accident on Flight 1363. If the engines had been turned off, they would not have been able to restart due to the non-functioning APU. Therefore, an engine was left in operation during the stay in Dryden. Since snow fell that day, a layer of 0.6-1.3 centimeters of snow collected on the wings. The wings had to be de-iced , but the Fokker F28 could not be de-iced, otherwise toxic fumes would have entered the aircraft cabin via the engine. The master therefore decided against de-icing. At this point, the airline's instructions were unclear, but the decision for the captain was very difficult. The machine's engine also had to run during refueling while the passengers remained on board. Exiting and boarding would have taken too long, and the longer the machine stayed on the ground, the more necessary de-icing became. In order to no longer jeopardize the passengers' vacation plans, Captain Moorwood finally decided to start the other engine and start it up. Running the engine had not yet been banned by the Transportation Safety Board of Canada and was therefore acceptable.

Result

The accident investigation was carried out by Virgil P. Moshansky . His report showed that competitive pressures caused by commercial deregulation led many airlines to sloppy practices and questionable pilot behavior put the aviation industry in a difficult position. The report also made it clear that aircraft should not be refueled at an airport that is not properly equipped and that pilots' manuals should alert them to the risk of failure to de-icing. Moshansky accused the Transportation Safety Board of Canada that Air Ontario was able to expand its fleet of complicated aircraft without realizing the shortcomings of their previous aircraft.

After the Fokker F28 crashed, many regulatory changes were made by the Transportation Safety Board of Canada. This included new refueling procedures and a general improvement in safety procedures for future flights in Canada. In particular, new de-icing fluids were produced and Type II fluids are increasingly used today. This mixture contains polymerisation agents which make the de-icing effect last longer.

An identically constructed Fokker F28 from Canadian Regional Airlines

monument

There is a memorial on MacArthur Road.

Web links

^ Accident report Fokker F28 C-FONF , Aviation Safety Network (English), accessed on April 3, 2017.