Plane crashes at Lethbridge Airport Nov. 13

By Nathan Reiter
Southern Alberta Newspapers
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

A small aircraft that took off in Taber crash landed at the Lethbridge Airport on Nov. 13.

Just after 2:15 p.m., Lethbridge Fire and Emergency Services responded to a call of a small aircraft crash. A twin-propeller Cessna 441 Conquest had come to rest on the grass beside an active runway.

Cameron Prince, the director of the Lethbridge Airport, says the pilot who was the only passenger onboard was able to walk away with no injuries.

“We got a call that an aircraft had landed with its gear up. Right away, our staff responded. It was an excellent response from everyone, our staff, the Lethbridge Fire, RCMP, everyone got here right away, got out to the aircraft, the pilot was able to walk away with no injuries. At that point, it was just making sure, because it did land in the dry grass, making sure there was no fire coming from that, especially with the highways and everything. Lethbridge Fire cleared the scene and then YQL Aviation was able to come out and recover the aircraft very quickly.”

According to a press release from the City of Lethbridge, the aircraft suffered significant damage to both engines and the landing gear.

“We’ve had similar incidents over the last few years.” Prince said. “It’s pretty rare to have something like this happen. They’re generally low-level risk, no injuries, that type of thing, so we’re pretty lucky that way.”

The runway was reopened at around 7 p.m. on Nov. 13. Prince says the airport completed their portion of investigating the incident.

“As far as our part, we just want to get the airport back up and running and we’ve done that. Now we’re going to continue to assess to make sure no additional damage was done to our infrastructure but at this point it looks like very minor pavement damage and things like that we have to worry about. As far as our part in the aircraft investigation we’re done with it, we’ve moved it and we carried on so we just now switch back to making sure the airport’s safe again.”

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada will investigate the cause of the incident.