46 Survive Canadian Jetliner Crash : 1 Killed, 14 Missing; Aircraft Was Bound for Winnipeg

An Air Ontario Fokker F-28 jet plane with 61 people on board crashed shortly after takeoff Friday in a wooded area covered with snow near here, and provincial police constable William Bradshaw said rescuers using snowmobiles and sleds found 46 survivors.

At least one person died in the crash and 14 people were still unaccounted for late Friday, Bradshaw said.

“The aircraft caught fire after impact and that has delayed rescue procedures,” he said.

Rescue operations stopped for the night and will resume at first light, Hugh Syrja, spokesman for Dryden’s emergency rescue group, said.

Forty of the survivors were taken to Dryden District General Hospital for treatment of injuries.

The Dutch-built aircraft, a twin-engine jet, was carrying 57 passengers and a crew of four, officials said. Initially they had reported 69 people were on board.

The plane, Air Ontario’s Flight 363 en route from Thunder Bay, Ontario, to Winnipeg, Manitoba, had just taken off after a scheduled stop in this Ontario farming town about 85 miles north of the U.S.-Canadian frontier when the crash occurred.

The jet clipped treetops and exploded, witnesses and authorities said.

Jacqueline Saville, general manager of the weekly Dryden Observer, said that the plane crashed about three-quarters of a mile from the runway.

“They got them out by snow machine and sled, since there are no roads there,” she said.

Rescuers used chain saws to cut through the woods to the site of the crash, and bulldozers later cleared a rough road into the area.

Rescue spokesman Syrja said that show machines were used to carry casualties from the crash scene to the roadway where ambulances took them to the hospital in Dryden, a town of about 6,500 population on the Trans-Canada Highway.

Not long after the crash, Saville reported that “you can see smoke from two miles away. When it came down, there was smoke.”

Cindy Borden, who lives near the airport, said: “I just went out to start my car. I heard it (the jet), then I didn’t hear it any more.”

After the crash, she said “there was just a blue haze all over the place, around the trees and stuff.”

Roxanne Groves, a nearby resident, heard the aircraft fly overhead.

“It was rumbling really bad,” she said. “It didn’t sound normal, and then all of a sudden, we heard a thump, a good thump. I looked out about five minutes later and there was black smoke all over the place.”

Cut Half-Mile Swath

Rescuers said that the plane cut a swath half a mile long and about 100 feet wide.

Dryden hospital spokesman Dennis Belleville said the survivors suffered from burns, fractures and shock. He said the more seriously injured would be flown to Winnipeg and Thunder Bay, and that some of the victims were being discharged from the hospital Friday night.

Belleville said the coroner went to the crash site.

James Harris, spokesman for the Canadian Aviation Safety Board, said that airline and safety board teams were traveling to Dryden from Winnipeg, Toronto and Ottawa to try to determine the cause of the crash. Other officials said that the weather was bad at the time of the accident.

“The weather . . . was heavy snow and poor visibility, less than 1 mile, closer to half to three-quarters of a mile,” said Norm Pascoe, spokesman for Transport Canada, the government transportation agency in Ottawa.

An Air Ontario spokesman said the plane was owned by the French airline TAT and was leased by the Canadian airline last year. McKnight of Air Ontario said that the plane was about 16 years old.

It was the first fatal crash involving a regularly scheduled commercial airliner in Canada in 10 years. In 1979, 17 people were killed in Quebec City when a Quebecair Fairchild 27 went down.

The worst air disaster in Canada occurred in 1985, when 256 people, mainly American servicemen, died in the crash of a chartered DC-8 in Gander, Newfoundland.