- The Transportation Safety Board has dispatched an investigation team to Halifax in response to the Dec. 28 incident of a collapsed left-side landing gear of a PAL Dash 8-Q400 passenger turboprop at that city’s Stanfield International Airport. The flight was operating as Air Canada Express flight AC2259 and was inbound from St. John’s Newfoundland. None of the crew or 79 passengers were injured, although they had to exit the aircraft on the runway. Dash 8s have experienced similar landing gear problems in the past.
- New RPAS (drone) rules are on the horizon as Transport Canada races to keep the regulatory environment up to date with the rapidly changing technology. “The entire drone space is exploding,” according to Langley, British Columbia-based Coastal Drone president Ian Wills. “They’re evolving and getting more powerful and more capable and empowering people to do things that we can’t even imagine yet.” The new rules are expected to relax some restrictions on long-distance flights.
- A former Nav Canada employee has gone public with a call for Canadian airports to be equipped with wind shear detection equipment, similar to what some American airports have. Brodie Lynn was on a flight from Vancouver to Kamloops in 2023 when the Dash 8 he was travelling in dropped precipitously on short final. “It was like being in a washing machine and only got worse as we came within (one kilometre) of the runway,” Lynn recounted. He said that passengers who were not strapped tightly into their seats hit the plane’s ceiling. The flight returned to Vancouver instead of attempting another approach. John Gradek, who teaches aviation management at McGill University, was quoted as saying, “There’s probably going to have to be an accident. I don’t think we’re going to do anything prior to that.”