On the 12th of December 1985, a chartered DC-8 carrying United States military personnel home from a mission in the Sinai Peninsula crashed on takeoff from a fuel stop in Gander, Newfoundland, killing all 256 people on board in what remains the deadliest air accident on Canadian soil. The disaster presented an enormous challenge to Canada’s air safety investigators, who faced a vast scene of desolation and an aircraft reduced to rubble, compounded by a faulty cockpit voice recorder and a barely functional data recorder. Considering this lack of evidence, it was unfortunate but not surprising that the inquiry split along political lines, dividing into two radically divergent camps who never came to an agreement about the cause of the accident.
Cogs in the Machine: The crash of Colgan Air flight 3407 and its legacy
On the 12th of February 2009, a Bombardier Q400 turboprop flying on behalf of Continental Connection lost control on approach and plunged into a…