Three people are dead after a float-equipped Murphy Moose crashed near Edmonton on Friday. Cooking Lake Airport Operations Manager Tom Steele told the CBC that the plane took off from the airport with the owner, an instructor and another unidentified person on board. Steele said the Moose has been based at the airport for five years and the owner was flying with an instructor to get checked out flying it with floats. The plane, a four-place experimental often used as a bush plane, was in the air for about a half hour before it crashed in a rural area about 20 km. east of Edmonton International Airport.
A witness reported that he heard the engine “stall” on the aircraft before the crash. Steele told the CBC the instructor was a well known local pilot who had thousands of hours of experience and was well respected. “That’s why I think something horrible went wrong. This guy had way too much [flight] time for something simple to happen. Something bad happened on that airplane,” Steele said in an interview with CBC News.