Police walk on to a property as they work at the site of a small plane crash in the Carp area of Ottawa on Nov. 4, 2018.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
The pilot of a small aircraft is dead after crashing in a field outside Ottawa following a mid-air collision with another plane.
The second plane, a twin-engine Piper with two people aboard, landed safely at the Ottawa International Airport Sunday morning after reporting the mishap to air traffic control, according to airport spokeswoman Krista Kealey.
The plane that crashed was a Cessna 150. It crashed within a couple of kilometres of Carp Airport, located 30 kilometres west of Ottawa.
“One aircraft fell out of the sky and unfortunately there was a fatality,” said Beverley Harvey, a senior investigator with the Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB). “It’s very rare to have a mid-air collision, but it happened.”
Investigators will be taking the Cessna to their laboratory in Ottawa to help determine the cause of the accident. Ms. Harvey said the TSB will be looking at the people involved, the two aircrafts and the weather as potential contributing factors.
She would not identify the victim or the two survivors in the second aircraft. Nor would she say where the planes originated or where they were headed when the accident occurred.
The weather was clear and sunny at the time of the crash, just after 10 a.m.
Ottawa paramedics responded to the crash and pronounced the occupant of the Cessna dead at the scene.