B.C. helicopter pilot sick with fever in days before fatal crash, report finds

The Transportation Safety Board says a helicopter pilot killed in a crash in British Columbia almost two years ago was sick in the days leading up to the accident and reported “shivering uncontrollably” before the aircraft went down.

The board’s report on the November 2022 crash says the helicopter was on a surveying flight near Kitsault, B.C., in the province’s northwest when the pilot reported being “unwell” about an hour and a half after takeoff.

The report says the helicopter crashed into a “heavily forested mountainside,” killing the pilot and destroying the aircraft.

The safety board says investigators couldn’t “determine the full context” of the fatal crash because the helicopter did not have flight data recording equipment that captures images and audio from aircraft cockpits.

The report says the Airbus helicopter was fitted with a tracking unit, but the data it records was “too sparse” to figure out the aircraft’s “exact manoeuvring” in the minutes before it went down.

The board’s report says the pilot was over 65 years old and had up-to-date medical certification and though he’d had past troubles with vertigo, the feverish symptoms and shivering during the flight suggested he “likely experienced a degree of incapacitation” before the crash.

The Transportation Safety Board has previously recommended that flight data recorders be required on commercial and private aircraft where they are not required now.

“The benefits of recorded flight data in aircraft accident investigations are well known and documented,” the report says, adding that the recommendation for “mandatory” installation was made after a fatal airplane crash that killed four people in 2016.

Transport Canada agreed to the recommendation, but there have been “lengthy delays in implementation,” the board says in its report.

It says Transport Canada has pushed back its timeline to publish details of possible regulatory changes until 2025 for “additional analysis.”