The plane crash happened on Thursday, Oct. 19, 2016. The Cessna Citation 500 took off from Kelowna International Airport at 9:32 p.m. destined for Calgary/Springbank Airport.
The plane disappeared off the radar and crashed eight minutes later in Winfield, 11 kilometres away. Everyone on the plane — Prentice, pilot Jim Kruk, Dr. Ken Gellatly and Sheldon Reid — died.
“After countless hours of analysis from experts pouring over wreckage, radar data and company and personnel records, we aren’t much closer to knowing with certainty what caused this accident,” TSB chair Kathy Fox said.
On Thursday, the board said the most plausible guess is that pilot Kruk, who was flying the plane alone, “experienced spatial disorientation and departed from controlled flight shortly after takeoff.”
The report found that shortly after departure from Kelowna, the aircraft entered a steep descending turn to the right until it struck the ground. No emergency call was ever made. The aircraft was not equipped with, nor was it required to carry, a cockpit voice recorder or a flight data recorder.
“We don’t like having to say, ‘We don’t know’ when asked what caused an accident and why,” TSB chair Kathy Fox said in a news release.
Because of the undetermined cause, the TSB is recommending the mandatory installation of lightweight flight rep reefs by all commercial and private business operators not currently required to carry them.
The board can recommend change, but can’t mandate it. That’s the job of Transport Canada.
The TSB also raised concern with the way transport Canada oversees private business aviation in the country. No records were found that indicated this aircraft had ever been inspected by Transport Canada.
Transport Minister Marc Garneau released a statement regarding the board’s report and recommendations:
“I would like to thank the Transportation Safety Board for their hard work on this investigation. Departmental officials are conducting a thorough review of the report and will provide a formal response to the board within the required 90-day time frame,” Garneau said.
“Transport Canada takes recommendations from the Transportation Safety Board very seriously and shares their goal of maintaining and improving the safety of Canada’s transportation network.”
The complex investigation included trying to reconstruct events leading up to the crash, sending pieces of the plane to a TSB lab in Ottawa for analysis and looking at drone footage from the scene. The pilot’s training, qualification, proficiency records and medical history were also part of the investigation.
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