Fatal Occurrence 2009O1715
Pilot had crashed airplane twice before
A Courtland man who died when his single-engine plane went down in a cornfield Wednesday had crashed two other times in the past seven years, says a federal investigator.
Alvin Foster flipped over into a ploughed field during a landing in 2002 and crashed into trees during a failed takeoff in 2007, said Don Enns, Ontario regional manager of air investigations for the Transportation Safety Board of Canada.
In both cases, the planes received "substantial damage" and in the 2007 incident Foster was "seriously injured," said reports about the incidents posted on a Transport Canada website.
On Wednesday morning, Foster, who was in his early 80s, took off from his own private airfield in Courtland, a village between Simcoe and Tillsonburg, and never returned.
Family contacted police hours later who in turn sent out a search and rescue plane. Foster's plane was found in a cornfield behind Courtland's community centre.
Enns said the exact cause of the crash is unknown but it appears as if Foster lost control of the craft.
"One thing I can tell you is that it was nose down and right wing down. That's indicative of a loss of control. What's going on now is that we are trying to determine what caused him to lose control of his aircraft."
An inspection of the wreckage has determined that the plane's controls were "functional," said Enns. "We found no faults whatsoever."
Two investigators at the scene will bring the engine and the control panel to the agency's Richmond Hill office for further study. Witnesses have been interviewed and a post mortem is scheduled for Friday morning in Hamilton.
Investigators are also looking into weather conditions at the time, added Enns.
A neighbour of Foster's, Ozzie VanHaverbeke, said he watched Foster take off at about 7:30 a.m. into a dense layer of fog that was hanging just over the tree tops.
VanHaverbeke, 78, said Foster flew so low over his property that it caused the pigeons he keeps, and had just let out, to "scatter."
The plane, he said, flew southward over the village, disappearing into the fog. VanHaverbeke said he heard Foster's engine throttle down, stop for three or four seconds, then throttle up again.
"Five, six, seven, eight seconds later the engine stopped again," he said.
VanHaverbeke said he suspects Foster was banking and trying to get back to the airfield.
"He may not have got above the fog," said VanHaverbeke, who helped pull Foster from his plane following the 2007 crash.
"We don't know how thick it was."
