Mossleigh mourns 3 killed in mid-air collision
Posted May 14, 2012 7:44 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Tragedy in the sky over Saskatchewan has rocked the small Alberta town of Mossleigh.
Investigators continue to scour debris from a mid-air collision Saturday between two planes near St. Brieux that killed five people.
Police are keeping tight-lipped about the victims, but relatives have identified the three aboard a Piper PA-28 as Denny Loree, Eric Donovan and 11-year-old Wade Donovan.
They were on their way to Bourgault Industries to pick up a part for the Donovan’s broken seeder.
Loree offered to fly his neighbours, the Donovans, to St. Brieux to save them from a six-hour car trip each way.
Their plane was travelling from Mossleigh to the airstrip in St. Brieux when it collided with a Lake Buccaneer amphibious plane en route to La Ronge.
It’s not known yet whether either plane had a flight recorder or what might have led to the impact.
Regional Manager of the Transportation Safety Board Peter Hildebrand says only the piper appeared on radar.
“We don’t have much on the Lake, LA4, likely because it was either too low or out of range of radar,” he says. “The other aircraft from Calgary did have a flight plan filed.”
Hildebrand adds they are in the beginning stages of their investigation, but weather doesn’t appear to have played a part.
“It does seem like it was visual flight rules weather, relatively benign weather as these things go,” he explains.
An unidentified man and woman, believed to be from the Regina area, who were aboard the other plane also died.
Donovan leaves behind a wife and three other children.
