.

Home page

Text size

E-mail this page

SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - A charter airplane narrowly missed a snow sweeper as it was taking off at the Yellowknife Airport last week.

"This is a breach of procedure, an extreme breach of procedure" said Earl Blacklock, communications manager with the territorial Department of Transportation.

The Arctic Sunwest De Havilland Dash 8-100 had just reached 80 knots during take off on March 4 at around 6:45 a.m. when the snow sweeper appeared on the runway.

According to Blacklock, an order to hold back from the runway was received and acknowledged, but the driver of the sweeper continued nonetheless. He said the driver was apparently concentrating on the performance of the sweeper, and trying to troubleshoot a mechanical problem that was causing the sweeper to shut down intermittently.

The visibility was about six and eight kilometres and upon seeing the sweeper, the pilot and crew of the aircraft decided that it was safer to continue the takeoff than abort and was able to fly over the sweeper, missing it by a distance of only 15 to 30 metres.

Blacklock said the reason for the incident was human error and that the Department is taking it very seriously.

After the incident, the driver of the sweeper reported himself and the department took steps to prevent a recurrence. One of these steps was a refresher course on airport protocol for all airport employees.

"The department is confident that the steps they have taken will prevent recurrence of the incident" said Blacklock.

The department have reviewed these steps with the Canadian Transportation Board and Transport Canada, which are both satisfied with the action, according to Blacklock.

Arctic Sunwest Charters declined to comment, and the Canadian Transportation Board are not investigating, just using the incident for statistical information.

A similar incident happened in Fort McMurray on Feb. 9.