The family of a 38-year-old air tanker pilot now has answers about how he died in Cold Lake last year — his plane was caught in the middle of a tornadic whirl caused by the fire he was fighting.

The details of his last moments are outlined in a report from the Transportation Safety Board (TSB), released Thursday.

The pilot flying the Conair air tanker had just completed two successful drops of firefighting material on the fire and was completing his third, when he hit rough air.

He had unknowingly flown into the centre of a tornadic fire whirl and spun out of control.

Large-scale fire whirls are similar to tornadoes generated by a thunderstorm. They're caused by high temperatures and unstable atmosphere and winds, and there are several documented examples.

Cyclone-like winds from a fire near Utah killed three people in 2007. In Australia in 2003, a tornado-like whirl uprooted trees and ripped roofs off houses. Most recently, the Fort McMurray wildfire created a funnel cloud that could be seen from space.

Image | cloud

Caption: Smoke from the Fort McMurray wildfire as seen from space. (NASA)

Load Image

In the Cold Lake incident, authorities discovered the high winds forced the front of the plane upward.

The pilot lost control of the plane. It whirled in the funnel cloud, flipped nose-down and spiralled to earth. The pilot died from the impact. He was the plane's only occupant.

The pilot and the aircraft were under contract by the Alberta government at the time.

TSB investigators said training may have been a factor. The report points out that while there is no regulatory requirement for training on conditions specific to forest fires, there is risk of aircraft being flown in unsafe conditions.

Less than a month after the crash, Conair held briefing sessions for its employees telling them about the environmental conditions and risks for working with forest fires.

The company also added a session about wildfire environmental risks to its training program, starting in March 2016.