EDMONTON — A report says a plane was doing a training spin at a lower-than-recommended altitude when it went down in a lake near Edmonton, killing a flight instructor and a student pilot.
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada says the plane was working properly and the weather was fine when it crashed in August 2023.
The student was on his 13th training flight when the plane took off from the Cooking Lake Aerodrome and crashed in Beaverhill Lake.
A search team found the wreckage after several hours, along with the body of the instructor, and the student died two days later of his injuries.
The report says the plane successfully pulled out of a deliberate first spin but, for unknown reasons, didn't recover from the second.
It says the last manoeuvre started at a lower elevation of 2,531 feet above ground level instead of 4,000 feet, which is standard practice for a training flight.
"While a spin from this height should have been recoverable, neither the student pilot nor the flight instructor was able to effect a recovery. The investigation was unable to determine the reason," said the report released Wednesday.
It said the Cooking Lake Aviation Academy has since revised its flight operations manual to formalize minimum altitudes for upper-air work and spins.
Diamond Aircraft Industries Inc. has also highlighted safety issues with its DA20-C1. The report says an emergency locator transmitter didn't activate when the plane crashed and that it's believed a wire on the device was not installed during assembly.
"Consequently, search and rescue efforts to reach the accident site were delayed," said the report.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 29, 2025.
The Canadian Press
