A pilot is now resting at home after being rescued from Lake Ontario on Friday afternoon when his small plane lost engine power and crashed off the shore of Tommy Thompson Park in the city’s east end.
Toronto police Duty Insp. Lhawang Jongdong said Billy Bishop Airport staff notified them just after 2 p.m. that they lost contact with an inbound aircraft. He said police also received multiple calls from witnesses who saw a plane having difficulty landing.
Emergency crews arrived to discover a small plane submerged and the pilot already out of the water with the help of nearby sailboaters.
Jongdong said the small privately owned aircraft had just taken off from the island airport and was on its way to Pembroke, Ont., for a medical call when it lost engine power.
When the 49-year-old pilot’s attempt to return to the Billy Bishop airport was unsuccessful, he deployed the aircraft’s parachute and hit the water shortly after, Jongdong said.
Images sent to CP24 show the moment the aircraft, with its parachute deployed, crashed into the waters of Lake Ontario.
“Upon landing in the water, nearby sailboaters obviously pulled the individual pilot off the water and then quickly transferred over to the Toronto Police Marine Unit,” he said.
Video taken by the sailboaters who came to the pilot’s rescue shows the aftermath of the crash with the plane sinking into Lake Ontario.
Paul Angus Bark was sailing with friends when they saw the plane hit the water at a “pretty hard angle.”
“The parachute suddenly came out, and we heard a bang, and then we saw it hit the water, so we just dropped sails, turned around, and headed straight to the plane,” Bark told CTV News Toronto.
“And then we got to it just as it sank. The pilot was only in the water for maybe a minute or two, but we pulled him out, and then we transferred him over.”
Jongdong said the pilot was assessed for minor injuries and has since gone home.
The duty inspector noted that Toronto police are liaising with Transportation Canada and the Ministry of Environment to ensure that there is no oil spill from the crash.
“As of now, it is fairly safe,” Jongdong said. “Also, we’ve notified the Coast Guard for navigational purposes to ensure that no boaters come in in that area.”
He expects the aircraft to be pulled out of the water sometime this weekend.
‘I saw and heard an explosion’
Downtown Toronto resident Doug Paulson was out for an e-bike ride in The Beaches area when he saw a small plane flying westbound between Ashbridges Bay and the Leslie Street Spit.
“Then, all of a sudden, I saw and heard an explosion,” he told CP24 on Friday evening, adding that several other cyclists, hikers, and people walking by quickly called 911 for help.
A hobby photographer, Paulson said he wasn’t able to snap a photo of that exact moment, but quickly grabbed his camera, which he said was outfitted with a long lens, and started taking pictures of aircraft crash landing into Lake Ontario.
Paulson, who is also a retired pilot, said as the plane slowly descended, a large parachute was released from its rear.
The aircraft then hit the water, he said, but appeared to be held up for a time by the wind, which Paulson said likely gave the pilot enough time to crawl out and sit on its nose.
He told CP24 that he’s been in communication with some of his aviation contacts, who have told him that the wreckage of the plane has now sunk about 40 feet.
Paulson added that the aircraft would need to be retrieved by a salvage crew so that the Transportation Safety Board of Canada could determine exactly what had happened.
“I’m very curious about what was that explosion,” said Paulson, who is also a voice actor.
Parachute helped minimized damage: expert
Duty Insp. Jongdong confirmed that the plane involved was a Cirrus aircraft, which is currently the only light plane equipped with a parachute system.
Phyl Durdey, CTV News’ aviation specialist, told CP24 that the parachute is the aircraft’s ballistic recovery system, which is usually attached to the back.
“If the aircraft has an engine failure or is in distress, what they can do is they can pop, they can pull the handle in the cockpit and deploy the parachute, and it brings the aircraft down, floats it down safely to the ground,” Durdey said.
“Having that ballistic parachute deployed, it helps him land anywhere and land safely.”
Durdey credited the recovery parachute system, which he described as “second to none,” for helping minimize the damage that the plane would have sustained when it hit the water.
“It can save a lot of lives, and it’s a good piece of equipment to have on the aircraft,” Durdey said.
