One person dead and another seriously injured after plane crashes into lake east of Edmonton

What caused a small plane to crash into a lake east of Edmonton on Friday, leaving a flight instructor dead and his student seriously injured, remains under investigation.

The plane was located just after midnight on Saturday morning about 200 metres off shore in the northwest portion of Beaverhill Lake, near the town of Tofield.

The man who died was a flight instructor at Cooking Lake Aviation Academy, which provides ground school classes and flight training from the Cooking Lake Airport, fewer than 60 kilometres away from the crash site.

The second person on board, a student at the flight school, was pulled from the wreckage and airlifted to a hospital in Edmonton. 

Lawrence Lau, the accountable executive at Cooking Lake Aviation, said his staff and students are reeling. 

"It certainly is a huge gut punch and we're all devastated by what has happened," Lau said in an interview. 

"Our hearts and our thoughts go out to the families of those who were involved and to our students." 

Lau said the plane, with student and instructor on board, was on a standard training flight Friday evening and was expected back well before sunset. 

When the flight was an hour overdue, the search and rescue effort began, he said.

Tofield RCMP were contacted by the Department of National Defence's Trenton Joint Rescue Coordination Centre to assist in locating the overdue aircraft. RCMP, Beaver County Fire and Rescue, Edmonton Police Service Air Services and Search and Rescue Canada, also assisted in the search.

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RCMP dispatched a police helicopter to the area. As darkness fell, a Griffon helicopter from Canadian Forces Base Cold Lake and a Hercules search and rescue aircraft from Winnipeg also joined the search, eventually locating the plane in shallow waters.

School officials do not know who was piloting the plane when it went down, Lau said.

During a standard training flight either the student or instructor could have been behind the controls, he said.

The extent of the student's injuries were not disclosed to the school, he said. 

Lau thanked first responders involved in the search and rescue operation. Company officials are co-operating with investigators, he said.

"We're going to support them in every way we can so we can avoid any such accidents occurring in the future," he said. 

"Ultimately, the flight school is committed to giving support to the families involved as much as possible … we're all so heartbroken by what has happened." 

In a statement Monday, investigators with the Transportation Safety Board of Canada said the aircraft is being transported to the agency's office in Edmonton for further examination.

The agency said two investigators were deployed to the scene at Beaverhill Lake on Friday to gather information and recover parts of the aircraft.

The field investigation at the crash site, about 75 kilometres east of Edmonton, was completed Sunday, the agency said.

"In the coming days, we will complete the detailed technical examination of the aircraft, conduct interviews and analyze the flight path data recorded by the RADAR and the aircraft avionics," the TSB said in a statement.

In an interview Monday, Jon Lee, regional manager for western Canada at the TSB, said an instructor and a student training for a private pilot's license were aboard the plane when it went down.

Lee could not say if the person who died was the student or teacher. 

The plane was found in about 15 centimetres of water, Lee said.

"Any time that we are at an accident site that involves water, it makes things complex for sure, not only in getting to the accident site safely, but also the equipment that's used to recover it without doing unnecessary damage to the aircraft." 

The aircraft was a DA20-CA, an all composite, low-wing, single engine, two-seat aircraft built specifically for flight training, Lee said.

Lee said as the plane itself is examined by investigators in Edmonton, the aircraft's electronic logs have been sent to the TSB's engineering branch in Ottawa. 

"We're hoping that we're going to be able to get some detailed information about about the aircraft's flight path prior to the accident," he said. 

"It's almost like every model of avionics can record different things, so we're not too sure exactly what it's going to have, but we're anticipating that we're going to get some good information." 

The crash is the third to happen in Alberta in the past three weeks. 

Six people died after a small plane crashed July 28 in the mountains west of Calgary. 

Last Thursday, two men were injured in plane crash near High River.