TSB report says chain of events led to deadly crash outside Vancouver’s airport

RICHMOND, B.C. – The Transportation Safety Board says a series of misfortunes and pilot errors, including the failure to properly secure an engine oil cap, caused the crash of a small plane outside Vancouver’s airport in October 2011.

The board’s Bill Yearwood says the engine’s manufacturer issued bulletin in 1995 about the oil cap, but that issue alone didn’t cause the plane to crash.

Instead, the unsecured oil cap forced the pilot to return to Vancouver and a chain of other problems combined to cause the crash.

The Northern Thunderbird King Air 100 aircraft with nine people aboard crashed and burst into flames on a busy road just before the airport’s runway, injuring the passengers and killing the two pilots.

Yearwood says the pilots could have survived the crash if not for the fire and he noted Transport Canada has failed to implement recommendations from the safety board to reduce post-crash fires.