According to media reports, a formal investigation has been launched after a "risk of collision" between two commuter planes at Sudbury Airport on Oct. 14.
The Oct. 14 incident saw a pair of Q400 turboprops, one from Jazz Aviation, the other from Porter Airlines, pass less than a kilometre from each other, both at about 1,200 metres.
The Porter flight was inbound to Sudbury from Toronto’s Billy Bishop airport and the Jazz Aviation Q400 had just departed for Toronto’s Pearson International Airport.
The close proximity of the two planes triggered the on-board collision avoidance system (TCAS) in each plane, sounding cockpit warnings.
According to a Toronto Star report, the Transportation Safety Board was notified of the incident by Nav Canada, a provider of air traffic control services.
Nav Canada files all incidences on the Canadian Aviation Daily Occurrences Report System (CADORS), and TSB then looks into the reports and decides whether or not an investigation is necessary.
According to a more recent, and separate incident report on the CADORS website, a report was filed for less than the required IFR (Instrument Flight Rules) separation between a Jazz de Havilland DHC-8-402 from Sudbury to Toronto and a WestJet Boeing 737 700 from Regina, SK, where it was determined that no further action was required.
"The pilots have their own collision awareness system, but we (Nav Canada) have our own separate collision awareness system," said Michelle Bishop, a spokesperson for Nav Canada.
"TSB is doing an active investigation into this, and when that happens we cooperate with the investigators. They (TSB) get the audio tapes of any dialogue back and forth between air traffic controllers and pilots and they speak to the pilots and they get our radar data all as part of the investigation."
The normal separation standards for aircraft operating under instrument flight rules are 300 metres vertically and at least 5.5 kilometres horizontally.
Porter spokesperson Brad Cicero told the Toronto Star that the incident was a “loss of separation. There was not a ‘near collision’.”
Sudbury.com has contacted the TSB for comment but have not yet received a response.
Please check back with Sudbury.com for more on this story as information becomes available.
