Lisa Cherneff, office manager at Saltspring Air, demonstrates the new pop-out windows installed on one of Saltspring Air's DHC-2 Beaver float planes.Deddeda Stemler/ The Globe and Mail
As far as St. Clair McColl is concerned, $3,000 is a small price to pay for the chance to save a float plane passenger from drowning, even if it means going above and beyond the safety requirements mandated by Transport Canada.
That's how much it cost Mr. McColl, founder and CEO of Saltspring Air, to fit each of his company's four de Havilland DHC-2 Beaver aircraft with special pop-out windows, custom designed to allow passengers to escape submerged planes.
"It's a pittance," Mr. McColl said. "I don't mind taking a leadership role if I can convince the rest of the community to get on board as well."
Designed by Viking Air, which holds the manufacturing rights for De Havilland parts, the triangular, moulded plastic windows were unveiled Wednesday at Viking's headquarters near Victoria airport.
The company decided to proceed with a pop-out window design after a De Havilland Beaver owned by Richmond-based Seair Seaplanes crashed into Lyall Harbour near Saturna Island last November, killing six people.
"Scalloped edges" allow trapped passengers to break the window seal by pushing firmly on the window's lower corners in the event of an emergency.
It took about six months to design and certify the modification with Transport Canada, said Viking Air CEO David Curtis.
"We felt as the people responsible for the airplane we needed to do any safety improvements we could do, so we just went ahead with it," Mr. Curtis said.
Recommended in various Transportation Safety Board reports dating back to 1994, pop-out windows are not mandatory under current Transport Canada regulations.
However, Transport Canada spokesperson Maryse Durette said Wednesday the department is "undertaking a full review… of potential measures to improve float-plane safety," including aircraft design standards.
The TSB has yet to issue formal recommendations stemming from the Saturna tragedy, but investigator Bill Yearwood said Wednesday that an inability to escape the submerged crash was a factor in the deaths.
"The people in that accident died as a result of drowning, not as a result of impact-related injuries, so issues of post-crash survival in water and escaping from aircraft in water have been raised," he said.
"When an aircraft sinks or submerges time is critical and anything that reduces your egress and the time it takes to get out of the wreckage is a good thing."
In the last 20 years, "fully submerged" plane crashes in Canada have claimed 77 lives, with drowning identified as the cause of death in 54 of those cases, Mr. Yearwood said.
However, he said there are challenges to issuing a blanket policy on pop-out windows, which are only suitable for certain types of aircraft.
"For an airplane that has small windows, that's not going to be the fix," Mr. Yearwood said. "But [the Beaver]is the most common float plane in Canada and there have been cases where the doors have jammed, so this was an obvious first step."
The undisputed workhorse of B.C.'s float-plane industry, there are currently about 500 de Havilland DHC-2 Beavers operating on the West Coast, Mr. Curtis said.
"I think it's likely you're going to see most of the Beavers on the coast go to pop-out windows," he said. "The real crucial thing is standardizing this because if passengers are expecting pop-out windows, they need to be there."
Campbell River-based air safety advocate Kirsten Stevens, who lost her husband in a float plane crash on Quadra Island five years ago, said she is pleased to see new safety measures being implemented by private industry, but called on the government to do more.
"For at least five years Transport Canada has been saying they need to do research to find out what can be done, but it just wasn't a priority," said Ms. Stevens, founder of SafeSkies.ca.
"They're making some noise now but it's only because things became so clearly obvious after the Saturna crash."
Special to The Globe and Mail