Piper aircraft broke apart in mid-air, say investigators

The Piper aircraft that crashed south of Sudbury and killed three people March 17 broke apart in mid-air, says the Transportation Safety Board of Canada.

The six-seater plane, which was manufactured in 1979 and imported to Canada in 2006, was about 70 kilometres south of Sudbury when the pilot, Leo Arseneau, 64, called air traffic control to say he had to turn the plane back to land in Sudbury.

Air traffic control gave him the go-ahead, and cleared for him to descend to 5,000 feet.

When they asked if there was anything else they could do to help, they never heard a response, said Don Enns, regional manager of the Transportation Safety Board's Toronto office.

“On radar, the airplane appears to suddenly start to descend extremely rapidly,” Enns said.

Investigators do not yet know what forced Arseneau to change his course, and eventually tore the plane apart.

They do know the plane broke apart while still in the air, though, because the debris was spread out at three separate crash sites.

The majority of the wreckage – which included the fuselage and tail of the aircraft, was discovered in a wooded area near the mouth of the French and Pickerel rivers.

Investigators discovered the majority of the left wing about half a kilometre to the northeast of the main crash site, and found parts of the right wing nearly two kilometres to the southeast.

“The first thing we need to do is get the aircraft wreckage out of the bush and into our facility here in Toronto,” Enns said.

It will be up to the insurance company to retrieve the wreckage, and due to the difficulties accessing the crash sites Enns could not say when that would happen.

They would likely need a helicopter to gather all the pieces of the aircraft, he said, and would then need to transport those pieces to Toronto.

Once the Transportation Safety Board of Canada reconstructs the aircraft, investigators will be better able to determine what failed first.

“Hopefully we can put together enough information that we can figure out the scenario of what happened,” Enns said.

In addition to Arseneau, who was a well-known lawyer from Sudbury, his wife Mary Lou, 65, and her caregiver, who has not yet been identified, were killed in the crash.