Transport Canada Still To Allow Bad-Weather Landings

Transport Canada continues to allow bad-weather landings in Canada that would be unheard of at U.S. airports, despite repeated warnings that planes and lives are at risk.

The federal aviation regulator hopes to have new rules in place by Dec. 1, but they will still be less strict than in the U.S. and U.K., and will exempt many aircraft as well as smaller airports in the northern territories.

Transport Canada's changes have been mired in a cumbersome industry consultation process for a decade, during which major accidents have claimed lives.

Transport Canada's own analysis found eight accidents between 1994 and 1999 that might have been prevented by tougher Canadian rules. The crashes killed seven people and injured 26, causing $38 million in destroyed or damaged planes.

In 2002, a Transportation Safety Board report said 34 people had been killed and 28 seriously injured between 1994 and 2001 in mishaps "where low visibilities and/or ceilings contributed to the accident."

The Air Transport Association of Canada, which represents airlines, says it is opposed to new landing rules until there is more evidence they would enhance safety.

Landings are guided by "approach bans," which set minimum standards for visibility to ensure pilots don't make unsafe landings because of pressure from their employers to stay on schedule, overconfidence in their own flying skills, or inexperience.

"The existing (Canadian) approach ban is terribly inadequate," said Bob Perkins, air safety co-ordinator of the Air Line Pilots Association and a veteran commercial pilot. "People are just doing approaches when they shouldn't be."

An ongoing investigation into aviation safety by the Toronto Star, Hamilton Spectator and The Record of Waterloo Region has found a system straining at the seams in increasingly crowded skies.

Canadian regulations for landings are so lax that Air Canada insists its pilots obey the company's own, tougher rules.

The country's largest carrier brought in those rules after one of its regional jets crashed attempting a low-visibility landing in Fredericton in 1997, seriously injuring nine of 42 on board.

But many airlines say they abide by the current rules. More than half of scheduled airline flights in Canada are operated by carriers other than Air Canada and thousands of flights head into remote or small-town airports where a loophole in the rules allows landings with zero visibility.

Canada's safety board says the current rules allow approaches when the weather is well below the visibility needed for a safe landing. It wants Transport Canada to "close the barn door," stopping pilots from even trying the dangerous landings, said Nick Stoss, director of air investigations for the TSB.

Canadian rules allow landing approaches at most major airports if the electronically measured visibility near the end of the runway is 1,200 feet (366 metres) or more. This reading is supposed to approximate the ability of a pilot to see lights fading into the distance along the runway.

The issue is whether a reading of 1,200 feet allows pilots to see far enough ahead to safely line up with the centre of the landing strip.

To get a sense of the distance, imagine looking down from the CN Tower observation deck and barely being able to see the Gardiner Expressway. That's how little a pilot can see and still be allowed to approach a major Canadian airport.

At the typical landing speed of a jet, 1,200 feet visibility means anything more than five seconds ahead of the plane is lost in the murk.

"If everything has worked out up to those last seconds," Perkins said, "you will see the last approach light or two ... you'll see the runway lights, and you will have five seconds to determine if the airplane is lined up adequately and in the right vertical plane to be able to touch down on the runway."