Passengers describe P.A. flight’s emergency landing

Smoke in the cockpit is being cited the official reason why a Transwest Air plane was forced to make an emergency landing Tuesday afternoon at the Prince Albert airport.

The plane en route to La Ronge from Prince Albert, was forced to turn around.

The chief operating officer for Transwest informed paNOW that there was a problem with the plane’s GPS unit.

“As they were climbing out of Prince Albert, en route to La Ronge, they noticed the GPS unit went blank,” said Garrett Lawless. “Immediately after the malfunction they had sort of an acrid smell, which is an indication of an electrical fire.”

Later investigation would reveal that there was a problem with the wiring inside the GPS unit.

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Shortly after the plane landed, a second SAAB aircraft was dispatched from Saskatoon with a full crew on board.  Within the hour, all 22 passengers were back up in the air.

Leon Sorenson was on board and said since he flies planes as well, he knew something was wrong.

“Our ears were popping eh, so it had something to do with cabin pressure.”

Maryanne Tsannie was on the plane with her husband and two grandchildren, one two years old and the other nine months.

“They just told us the plane was turning around and there was something wrong with the plane,” she said.

Although Tsannie said she thought she smelled smoke, she didn’t see any. 

Throughout the flight, staff kept everyone calm according to Sorenson.

“There was no screaming. Everybody was 100 per cent, except for the babies crying in the back, but they didn’t know what was going on anyway,” he said.

Tsannie echoed that, saying she had to tell two ladies who were reading during the announcement that they would soon be turning around.

The staff asked everyone to take the ‘cradle position’ as they landed at the Prince Albert Airport.

“You gotta bend over and put your hands in front of you from the seat and you just stay in that position until the plane stops,” Sorenson explained.

This was the first time that’s happened on a flight for Sorenson.

Passengers were escorted off the plane, safe and sound, after the landing.

Although Tsannie said she wasn’t worried for herself or her grandchildren, soon after the landing she cried and called her daughter in Wollaston Lake about what happened.

Many passengers followed suit, phoning work or family.

Lawless has been with Transwest Air for less than three months, and he said he was quite impressed with the way the crew handled the situation.

“You never know what kind of team you are inheriting but this team really impressed me at a very deep level, and I feel very comfortable moving forward seeing them perform in situations like this,” he said. “Sometimes these things just happen, it certainly was no one in the crew’s fault.”

He added the air crew is trained regularly using simulators.

“That does a lot to build muscle memory and intellectual understanding in how to respond in sitautions like this but you will never know how you’ll respond to a situation until you face it for real. In this case this particular crew handled it in a textbook fashion”.

-With files from Nigel Maxwell.

claskowski@panow.com

On Twitter: @chelsealaskowsk