First Air Flight 6560 was a domestic

charter flight Air charter is the business of renting an entire aircraft (i.e., chartering) as opposed to individual aircraft seats (i.e., purchasing a ticket through a traditional airline). Regulation Charter – also called air taxi or ad hoc – flights ...

that crashed on landing at Resolute,

Nunavut Nunavut is the largest and northernmost Provinces and territories of Canada#Territories, territory of Canada. It was separated officially from the Northwest Territories on April 1, 1999, via the ''Nunavut Act'' and the Nunavut Land Claims Agr ...

, Canada, on 20 August 2011. Of the 15 people on board, 12 were killed and the remaining three were severely injured. The

Boeing 737-200 The Boeing 737 is an American narrow-body aircraft produced by Boeing at its Renton factory in Washington. Developed to supplement the Boeing 727 on short and thin routes, the twinjet retained the 707 fuselage width and six abreast seating ...

First Air Bradley Air Services Limited, operated as First Air, was an airline headquartered in Kanata, Ontario, Kanata, a suburb of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

was operating a service from

Yellowknife Yellowknife is the capital, largest community, and the only city in the Northwest Territories, Canada. It is on the northern shore of Great Slave Lake, about south of the Arctic Circle, on the west side of Yellowknife Bay near the outlet of t ...

Northwest Territories The Northwest Territories is a federal Provinces and territories of Canada, territory of Canada. At a land area of approximately and a 2021 census population of 41,070, it is the second-largest and the most populous of Provinces and territorie ...

, when it struck a hill obscured by clouds near Resolute Bay Airport. The subsequent investigation found that a late initiation of the descent, the inadvertent partial disengagement of the

autopilot An autopilot is a system used to control the path of a vehicle without requiring constant manual control by a human operator. Autopilots do not replace human operators. Instead, the autopilot assists the operator's control of the vehicle, allow ...

during final approach, a drift in the aircraft compass system and poor communication between the flight crew resulted in the aircraft drifting significantly off course from the final approach path, descending into the ground moments after the crew initiated a

go-around In aviation, a go-around is an aborted landing of an aircraft that is on Final_approach_(aeronautics), final approach or has already touched down. A go-around can either be initiated by the pilot flying or requested by air traffic control for var ...

History of the flight

Flight 6560 had departed from

Yellowknife Airport Yellowknife Airport is located in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada. The airport is part of the National Airports System, and is operated by the Politics of the Northwest Territories, Government of the Northwest Territories. The airport ...

at 09:40

Central Daylight Time The North American Central Time Zone (CT) is a time zone in parts of Canada, the United States, Mexico, Central America, and a few Caribbean islands. In parts of that zone (20 states in the US, three provinces or territories in Canada, and ...

(14:40

Coordinated Universal Time Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) is the primary time standard globally used to regulate clocks and time. It establishes a reference for the current time, forming the basis for civil time and time zones. UTC facilitates international communicat ...

(UTC)) on 20 August for a flight to Resolute Bay Airport carrying 11 passengers, 4 crew members and freight. Captain Blair Rutherford was designated as

pilot flying In commercial aviation with a two-person flight crew, the pilot flying (PF) is the pilot operating the flight controls of the aircraft. The other pilot is referred to as the pilot monitoring (PM) or pilot not flying (PNF). Before a flight departs, ...

for the segment, and First Officer David Hare as the pilot monitoring. The flight was to be conducted in accordance with

instrument flight rules In aviation, instrument flight rules (IFR) is one of two sets of regulations governing all aspects of civil aviation aircraft operations; the other is visual flight rules (VFR). The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) ''Instrument Fl ...

. Reports received shortly after take-off indicated deteriorating weather at Resolute, but the crew agreed that the flight should not divert. After an uneventful flight and initial descent, at 11:38 the aircraft made its final turn to line up with Resolute Airport's runway 35 (see runway naming), and the crew reported to be away from it. While descending in cloud, however, instead of following the localizer signal along the runway's track, the aircraft settled on a track roughly parallel and to the east of the runway centreline. At 11:41, as the crew initiated a

, Flight 6560 collided with terrain abeam the runway approximately to the east, breaking up into three main sections. An intense post-crash fire consumed most of the centre section. Both pilots, two flight attendants and eight passengers were killed in the impact. Three passengers survived with severe injuries. Rescue operations were carried out by

Canadian Forces The Canadian Armed Forces (CAF; , FAC) are the unified Military, military forces of Canada, including sea, land, and air commands referred to as the Royal Canadian Navy, Canadian Army and the Royal Canadian Air Force. Under the ''National Defenc ...

temporarily stationed at Resolute as part of the 2011 Operation Nanook military exercise, which coincidentally used a simulated remote aircraft crashing as one of two main training scenarios.

Aircraft

The aircraft involved was a combi (or combined passenger-cargo)

Boeing 737-210C The Boeing 737 is an American narrow-body aircraft, narrow-body aircraft produced by Boeing at its Boeing Renton Factory, Renton factory in Washington (state), Washington. Developed to supplement the Boeing 727 on short and thin routes, the t ...

with registration C-GNWN. It was manufactured in 1975 with serial number 21067/414. C-GNWN was fitted with a

gravel kit A gravel kit is a modification on an aircraft to avoid foreign object debris (FOD) damage or ingestion while operating on unpaved surfaces. Modifications generally include methods of preventing the nose gear spraying FOD into the engine and onto t ...

to enable operations from unpaved runways, such as the one at Resolute Bay Airport. No significant problems with the aircraft maintenance records were found during the investigation.

Investigation

The accident was investigated by the

Transportation Safety Board of Canada The Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB, ), officially the Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation and Safety Board () is the agency of the Government of Canada responsible for advancing transportation safety in Canada. It is acc ...

(TSB). In January 2012, the TSB issued an investigation update classifying the accident as a

controlled flight into terrain In aviation, a controlled flight into terrain (CFIT; usually ) is an aviation accidents and incidents, accident in which an airworthy aircraft, fully under pilot control, is unintentionally flown into the ground, a body of water or other obstac ...

(CFIT). It stated that the go-around manoeuvre was initiated two seconds before impact. At that time, the crew had completed the landing checklist, the flaps were at 40, the aircraft was travelling at and the landing gear was down and locked. Both engines were in operation and producing power. The aircraft had been following an instrument landing system (ILS) approach due to poor visibility. Post-crash investigation found the airport's ILS system to be operating normally, and was in fact used by another aircraft that successfully landed 20 minutes after the crash of Flight 6560. In March 2014, the TSB issued the final accident report. It found that the crew's decision to initiate the descent from cruise altitude was late, and it resulted in a significantly increased workload that affected the crew's subsequent performance and ability to properly track all parameters. The approach was entirely flown on autopilot, which was correctly set to capture the localizer signal and track along the runway centreline (VOR/LOC capture mode). However, an inadvertent movement of the

control column A yoke, alternatively known as a control wheel or a control column, is a device used for Pilot (aeronautics), piloting some fixed-wing aircraft.Crane, Dale: ''Dictionary of Aeronautical Terms, third edition'', page 563. Aviation Supplies ...

by the captain during the turn onto the final approach track caused the autopilot to disengage from VOR/LOC mode and revert to only maintaining the current heading, resulting in the aircraft drifting out to the right (east) of the runway centreline. The deviation was correctly shown on the onboard localizer indicator. However, for undetermined reasons, the compass system had been incorrectly set during initial descent so that it displayed a heading that was 8° to the left of the actual heading. Furthermore, the pilot did not recalibrate the compass after the initial descent, 15 minutes before the accident, though regular recalibration when so near the

North Magnetic Pole The north magnetic pole, also known as the magnetic north pole, is a point on the surface of Earth's Northern Hemisphere at which the Earth's magnetic field, planet's magnetic field points vertically downward (in other words, if a magnetic comp ...

is necessary; the magnetic influence further increased the initial mis-calibration to 17°, giving the captain the wrong impression that the aircraft was tracking towards regaining the runway centreline. In fact the aircraft was flying roughly parallel to the runway, and a wind from the southwest was pushing it even further to the east. Under a significantly increased workload, neither pilot noticed the partial disengagement of the autopilot. The first officer was aware that the aircraft was off course to the right and heading for the hill east of the airport. He tried to warn the captain 18 times, using multiple different variations of phrasing, but failed to find a way to convey the urgency of the situation and make the captain change his course of action. After the

ground proximity warning system A Ground Proximity Warning System (GPWS) is a system designed to alert pilots if their aircraft is in immediate danger of flying into the ground or an obstacle. The United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) defines GPWS as a type of ...

(GPWS) issued a 'sink rate' warning, the captain finally commanded a go-around, but there was insufficient distance from terrain to avoid the collision. The TSB highlighted how according to First Air's own standard operation procedures, the approach was clearly unstable and should have been aborted at an early stage. The board stressed the risks posed by unstable approaches that are continued to a landing, and called for airlines and authorities to enforce standard operating procedures and crew resource management best practices, to help crews manage workload and communicate effectively in order to make better decisions.

Dramatization

The crash of First Air Flight 6560 was dramatized in "Death in the Arctic", a season 14 (2015) episode of the internationally syndicated Canadian TV documentary series ''

Mayday Mayday is an emergency procedure word used internationally as a distress signal in voice-procedure radio communications. It is used to signal a life-threatening emergency primarily by aviators and mariners, but in some countries local organiz ...

''. It features as one of the examples in season 2 of The Rehearsal of an aircraft's first officer being unable to effectively warn the captain that the aircraft was in imminent danger of crashing.

History of the flight

Aircraft

Investigation

Dramatization

References

External links