All good questions. I’m watching to see what they find out.
A post someone incorrectly made in 737C ditching thread questions visibility of airplane with snow on the ground.
From what little I see on the Internet search was hampered by poor weather and deep snow.
I also note the difficulty of finding an airplane in forested territory, especially among conifers which are common in that location - and rugged terrain as reported by ASN for this case. Wrecks are still being found in mountain areas in SW B.C, albeit underbrush is heavy on the wet coast. Some found by hikers, some found by happenstance sighting by another airplane, some many decades later.
The crash occurred a few km from a regular road past Old Woman Bay on Lake Superior.
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Chalk up another failure for our overpriced, and basically unreliable ELTs. My condolences to their families.
Police are saying the wreckage was not easily seen from above.
https://cdn.aviation-safety.net/wikibase/277518
Beware that investigations can be limited, for example the one for the Mooney at Springbank west of Calgary is a ‘class 4’ investigation.
You need to have a newer 406 MHz ELT that works on satellite communication and provides a GPS location. You should trigger it manually if you know that you are going to have an off-field landing. Also, you should carry a personal emergency locating beacon on your person that also works on 406 MHz or one of the SPOT products that also has satellite communication and GPS coordinates (or carry both).
There were two aboard.
The Grammar Police salute you.
Thanks for the added context. Makes sense
Because they didn’t wait till spring?
Will be revealed I expect, depending in part on wishes of families, as mission seemed routine - ferrying an airplane they’d purchased, unlike the earlier crash in ON with criminals on board. Unfortunately TSB Canada is slow to put information on their web site.
They were only 2 km from a road (see the map I linked to) so if alive and at least one of them able to fight through snow should have been rescued. (Good pilots flying over bush know where they are.) Alas, probably not the case.
I remember years ago in the South Peace a classmate’s father was in an airplane that went down near a highway, in winter, one person managed to struggle out to it and someone eventually came along. All survived IIRC.
Flying near roads and highways is good practice I think.
Long ago I was in a survey camp not far from there, up the Sukunka, and a Bell 47G3 went into the trees very close to camp, engine quit just after liftoff. Pilots injured. Once they were extracted their fellow pilots made a beeline cross-country to a hospital, saving a bit of time over following highways as was SOP.
(Thinking back, I have no idea why pilots did not get altitude before going above the trees, there was a wide open area they took off from. I was just the cooks’ helper.)
As mentioned the weather was bad, there was in the range of three feet of snow on the ground and the missing a/c was white. It was found after the snow was gone.
The pros only run a search until there’s no possibility of survival.