A Cessna floatplane owned by Atleo River Air Services hit a wave and flipped over in Tofino Harbour Monday morning during take-off.
Four passengers and a pilot were on board and managed to climb out of the aircraft and onto a sandbar.
Misty Lawson, base manager for the small Tofino airline, said that at 11:40 a.m., the plane “hit a large boat wake and prematurely became airborne and it ended up tipping over on its nose.”
“The incident did some damage to the aircraft, but luckily no one on board had sustained any serious injuries,” Lawson said in a Times Colonist story, adding that the pilot has more than 10,000 hours of flight time. “We are just really, really glad that everyone is OK.”
Tofino Fire Chief Brent Baker said the accident happened fairly close to shore, near a Canadian Coast Guard station.
The federal transportation safety board (TSB) is now gathering and assessing information about the crash, which involved a Cessna A185F. Nobody on the plane was seriously injured.
In July 2019, a Cessna 208 Caravan carrying a pilot and 8 passengers left Vancouver bound for a remote fishing lodge on Calvert Island north of Vancouver Island when it crashed.
Four people died. The TSB said the pilot’s decision to fly in low visibility. In addition, poor weather conditions contributed to the accident. The plane crashed into a hillside on Addenbroke Island, just 17 km from the fishing lodge.
