Six occupants of a Seair de Havilland Beaver floatplane that crashed on takeoff at Saturna Island last November drowned after the impact jammed most of the aircraft's doors shut, says the Transportation Safety Board.
Four of the dead managed to get their seatbelts off but were not able to get out of the plane. One of the dead was a baby travelling with their mother.
Two survivors escaped because the impact caused the doors closest to them to pop open.
“The [crash] impact caused two doors to jam shut and two doors to pop open,” Bill Yearwood, the investigator in charge of an ongoing investigation, told an update briefing today.
The pilot and a passenger escaped and were rescued on the surface of the waters of Lyall Harbour at Saturna Island where the crash occurred.
There are no results to announce on the cause of the crash, but Mr. Yearwood said the investigation is raising concerns about jettisonable or push-out emergency exits on airplanes, among other issues.
Mr. Yearwood said there have been “persistent safety communications” to the federal Transportation Department over the issue of such doors.
“All the issues we see in this occurrence have been raised before,” he said.
“We have a loss of life and we have jammed-door issues we're looking at in more detail to see what can be done,” said Mr. Yearwood.
He could not say if the dead would have survived had the doors been jettisonable.
“We can say that because they drowned we know the blunt force injuries or trauma were not the cause of death,” he said.
“There are things that could mitigate the risks of people being trapped in aircraft and this is one of them.”
Mr.Yearwood said he hopes to have a full report on the accident ready for release by the first anniversary of the crash.
