For the third year in a row, there were no fatal business jet accidents in Canada in 2019, according to preliminary statistics recently published by the nation’s Transportation Safety Board (TSB). However, the tally of five nonfatal accidents involving privately operated small turbine-powered aircraft reported last year in Canada was unchanged from 2018.
The TSB also recorded five nonfatal accidents in 2019 involving on-demand large business jets compared with just one mishap in 2018. Air-taxi operators of small piston and turboprop airplanes suffered 26 total accidents last year, three more than in 2018. There were four turboprop accidents last year that claimed the lives of 11 crew and passengers.
Overall, the TSB said the total number of aviation accidents (226) reported in 2019 was slightly lower than the five-year average of 234. However, fatal accidents increased to 32 with 67 fatalities in 2019, compared with 23 fatal accidents in which 38 people were killed in 2018.
The last fatal business jet accident in Canada occurred on Oct. 13, 2016, when a privately operated Cessna Citation 500 on an IFR flight at night lost control and crashed shortly after departure. The pilot and three passengers were killed. The TSB said lack of an FDR or CVR, prevented investigators from “fully identifying and understanding the sequence of events and the accident’s underlying causes and contributing factors.”