Nightmare at the Edge of the World: The crash of Panarctic Oils flight 416
On the 30th of October 1974, a four-engine Lockheed Electra crashed into the frozen Arctic Ocean on approach to the remote oil exploration outpost of Rea Point in Canada’s far north. Large portions of the burning wreckage plunged through the ice, but against all probability, the first officer and flight engineer survived for more than two hours amid extreme cold and howling winds before rescuers arrived, becoming the only survivors out of 34 passengers and crew. It was, and remains, the worst air disaster in the Canadian Arctic.
The cause of the crash baffled experts and the survivors alike. Both surviving crewmembers reported that all was normal until 300 feet on final approach, when the captain suddenly declared that they were above a cloud layer and needed to get below it. This was untrue, but before the first officer could challenge him, he pitched sharply down and dived the plane directly into the frozen sea. In an effort to explain this inexplicable act, investigators examined a litany of possible factors, from the operating culture at Panarctic Oils, to the visual conditions on the night of the crash, to the captain’s health and personal life. In the end, consensus was difficult to find. Did the captain act irrationally due to complications of untreated liver disease? Was he misled by an illusion amid the darkness and blowing snow? Was he suddenly incapacitated by a seizure? Or was it simply an accumulation of small operational, psychological, and physiological stressors that all came together in a brief moment of madness? There isn’t a clear answer, but there is a fascinating, forgotten story to be told along the way.
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In 1966, the government of Canada joined forces with 37 private companies to form a government-industry oil exploration consortium called Panarctic Oils. The mission of the consortium was to determine the size of the oil reserves believed to lie under Canada’s High Arctic, to investigate the possibility of commercial extraction, and to assert Canadian sovereignty over the vast, sparsely populated archipelago.
Driven by soaring oil prices in the early 1970s, Panarctic Oils drilled 150 exploratory wells in the Canadian Arctic between 1969 and 1986, leading to the discovery of significant natural gas reserves that Panarctic estimated at 3.1 trillion barrels, as well as a comparatively modest 250 to 500 million barrels of oil.
The largest natural gas deposit discovered by Panarctic, which came to be known as the Drake Point gas field, was located on the northern tip of Melville Island, at a latitude of around 76 degrees north. Parts of Melville Island can be counted as among the most remote on earth. The 42,000-square-kilometer island, approximately the same size as Denmark, has no permanent inhabitants and was largely ignored by the Inuit, Thule, and Dorset peoples who inhabited the region during the last 2,000 years. In fact, there was simply no reason to go to Melville Island for most of history. The island is almost entirely barren with very few plants; snow and freezing temperatures occur year-round; and the island is accessible by water for only two weeks out of the year, when the sea ice briefly retreats from its shores in late August and early September.
Many millions of years ago, what is now Melville Island lay beneath a shallow sea, where innumerable microorganisms lived, died, and decomposed, leaving behind large underground deposits of organic compounds that we know today as natural gas. Panarctic Oils didn’t consider natural gas to be its primary objective, but when the company discovered Canada’s largest natural gas field at Drake Point, the consortium made Melville Island the centerpiece of its far-flung operation.
The hub for the exploration project was constructed on the east coast of Melville Island at a place called Rea Point. Almost overnight, this bleak, icy stretch of gravel was transformed into an exploration camp featuring dormitories, a mess hall, storage buildings, maintenance facilities, offices, and an airport with a radio post and a 6,300-foot unpaved runway. From about 1969, Rea Point was used as a staging area for crew changes and resupply at the majority of Panarctic’s drilling sites, which were served by a fleet of helicopters and 19-passenger de Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter aircraft. Heavy airlift operations were initially performed by contractors using Lockheed C-130 Hercules cargo planes, while the heaviest equipment was brought to Rea Point by ship during the brief withdrawal of the sea ice at the end of summer.
Running an ambitious network of stations in such a remote, inhospitable location proved to be a massive challenge. Keeping the runway and facilities clear of snowdrifts was a round-the-clock struggle, and when the snow did briefly stop for the summer thaw, the runway became too soggy for heavy aircraft, forcing C-130s to divert to Sherard Bay, over 100 kilometers to the north. Although the runway was later improved to permit year-round use, many other challenges remained. Initially, the only communications link to the mainland was by HF radio, which was often interrupted for days at a time by geomagnetic storms until a satellite link was installed in 1974. The weather also presented considerable issues, from temperatures that would freeze electronics to whiteout conditions in blowing snow. And from November to February each year, the sun did not rise.
Despite the harsh conditions, Panarctic Oils was there to prove that fossil fuels could be located and extracted from the Canadian Arctic, and thousands of people worked under grueling conditions to accomplish that mission. But like most remote extractive operations, permanently relocating staff to the region was infeasible, so Panarctic set up rotating shifts where groups of workers would arrive by aircraft, relieve their predecessors, work for a time, and then return home. In many such operations the length of a shift is about two or three weeks.
Initially, Panarctic Oils contracted out personnel change flights to third parties, but beginning in 1971, the company took on direct responsibility for this service. Panarctic already had an internal aviation division that used a fleet of Twin Otters to move personnel between Rea Point and the remote gas wells, but to transport each new shift to and from the mainland, the company required something bigger. In January 1972, Panarctic Oils began operating a four-engine turboprop Lockheed L-188 Electra in a combination or “combi” configuration, with a cargo area in the forward cabin and passenger seating in the rear. The aircraft, registered as CF-PAB, was originally built in a passenger-only configuration but was retrofitted as a combi in the United States before it was imported to Canada in 1969 and sold to Panarctic in December 1971. A second Electra was added to the fleet in 1973.
Although at a glance Panarctic Oils appeared to operate an airline, complete with a reservation system, a check-in counter, baggage handlers, and a regular schedule, it was not legally considered a scheduled air carrier. Because the Panarctic Oils air division existed solely to move company personnel between its headquarters in Alberta and its operational base at Rea Point, and was not intended to provide transport services in exchange for money, it was officially classified as private or general rather than commercial aviation. This meant that the strict safety standards for commercial airlines did not apply to Panarctic, which was subject only to the same bare minimum regulations as any private individual who happened to own an airplane.
This regulatory class effectively shielded Panarctic Oils’ aviation division from most government oversight. They were required to maintain their aircraft according to the same airworthiness program as any other Lockheed Electra operator, and their flight crews had to possess the same licenses, but the pilot training, operating procedures, and equipment did not have to meet airline standards. For instance, Panarctic Oils had no flight operations manual detailing company procedures, nor was it required to have one. Furthermore, the Rea Point airfield was wholly owned by Panarctic Oils and was not open for public use, which meant that the airport was not subject to Ministry of Transport inspection or regulations either.
Rea Point had some notable differences from a commercial airport, in addition to being unpaved. In some respects, it was normal; for instance, it was equipped with a VOR (VHF omnidirectional range) beacon and an NDB (non-directional beacon) for navigation purposes, as well as runway lighting and an approach lighting system, although the latter was shorter than permitted at a commercial airport. But it lacked an air traffic controller; instead, communications with aircraft were handled by a radio operator, who did not hold, and was not required to hold, any license. The radio operator’s duties included not only coordination of air traffic but also coordination of ground vehicle movements, communications with other Panarctic stations, and transmitting weather reports. Due to the high level of activity at that time, the number of aircraft movements could sometimes exceed 100 per shift, in addition to non-aviation-related duties, a workload that was handled by only two people — again, neither of whom was licensed.
If a lax operating environment, overworked personnel, and extreme conditions sounds like a recipe for disaster, that’s because it was. And yet, the disaster that eventually struck would defy any easy assignment of blame.
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On October 29th, 1974, CF-PAB came out of maintenance in Calgary, Alberta, just hours before a scheduled trip up to Rea Point to bring in a new shift. The aircraft was ferried from Calgary to Edmonton that same day in order to position it for the flight into the Arctic.
One of the crewmembers who repositioned the aircraft was 32-year-old First Officer David Hatton. Hatton had about 5,000 hours of experience since he took up flying in 1966, but almost all of that time was on light, single-pilot aircraft. He was hired by Panarctic in 1973 to fly the Twin Otter, before upgrading to the much larger Electra only in August 1974, two months before the incident. By October 29th, he had only 160 hours in the Electra, which was his first ever multi-crew aircraft.
Hatton was among the flight crew assigned to the overnight flight into the Arctic, which was scheduled to depart at about 20:00, with an estimated arrival in Rea Point at 00:30. The same crew would then fly onward to an exploration site on the Bjorne Peninsula on Ellesmere Island, followed by a return trip to Edmonton, all in one shift. This would have come out to around 10 hours of flying time, not including stops or pre-flight preparations, running through the night and into the next day — a brutal schedule by any standard. Such a shift would not meet modern duty time limits for commercial pilots. However, because the flight was conducted under general aviation, no duty time limits applied.
The other members of the flight crew that night were a captain and a flight engineer. 30-year-old Captain Brian Thomson had been flying since 1963 and joined Panarctic in 1970, where he also flew the Twin Otter before upgrading to the Electra in January 1972. He was promoted to captain in June of that same year, and by the incident flight he had accumulated 8,143 total hours, including 1,792 on the Electra. His skills were described as average to above average for a Panarctic captain.
The flight engineer was 26-year-old Garry Weyman, whose 975 hours on the Electra made him one of the most senior flight engineers at Panarctic — not that there were very many. His role in the strict cockpit hierarchy was, however, subordinate. Under Panarctic company policy, the flight engineer was expressly forbidden from contributing to operational decisions on the flight deck unless aircraft systems were involved. Weyman would later state that he rarely even listened to operational conversations between the captain and the first officer, because he had been told that it was not his place to interfere. This policy was not only completely counter to modern notions of crew resource management, it was probably considered somewhat regressive even at the time. But few to none of Panarctic’s pilots had ever flown for an airline, and most had never previously flown a multi-crew aircraft at all, so this policy might not have struck them as extraordinary.
After waking up at noon, Captain Thomson arrived at Edmonton Airport to meet the rest of the crew and oversee the loading process. In addition to supplies for the base, 31 passengers had been booked on the flight, along with a combined loadmaster and flight attendant. All of the passengers were men, some of whom were on their way to the Arctic for the first time; the youngest, having apparently landed his first real job, was just 17.
Upon arrival, the crew received the latest weather forecast for Rea Point, issued at 16:00 and valid for 12 hours. The forecast called for scattered clouds at 1,500 feet, broken clouds at 8,000 feet, wind 300 degrees at 22 knots with gusts higher, and visibility 3 miles (4,800 m) with ice crystals, decreasing to ¾ mile (1,200 m) in light snow and ice fog. Panarctic’s visibility minimums for Rea Point were 450 feet vertically and 1 mile (1,600 m) horizontally, so the conditions in the forecast were acceptable, but trending toward marginal.
The Panarctic duty pilot in Edmonton selected Resolute, about 320 km (200 mi) southeast of Rea Point, as the flight’s designated alternate airport. This selection was improper because the reported weather at Resolute indicated 1 mile (1,600 m) visibility in blowing snow, which was below the 3 miles (4,800 m) required for an alternate airport under Panarctic policy. An airport selected as an alternate must have conditions that are better than the destination; an alternate with equal or worse conditions defeats the purpose.
After reviewing the materials, Captain Thomson told the duty pilot that Resolute was unsuitable as an alternate, and they agreed to change the alternate airport to Pedder Point. Official documents don’t say where Pedder Point was located, but it appears to have been a temporary airfield somewhere on the otherwise uninhabited Eglinton Island, about 360 km (220 mi) west of Rea Point. Pedder Point lacked a properly equipped weather observation station capable of issuing a weather forecast; instead, the weather data for Pedder Point was a less formal and less accurate “terminal advisory,” indicating no overcast and 2 miles (3,200 m) visibility. A commercial flight would not have been able to select Pedder Point as an alternate due to the absence of a weather report meeting the legal definition of a “forecast.” However, there was no rule preventing Panarctic from doing so.
Aware that the reports from Pedder Point were potentially unreliable, Captain Thomson decided to take enough fuel to fly to Rea Point, divert to Pedder Point, make a missed approach, and then fly 680 kilometers back to Resolute, plus another 45 minutes. This decision resulted in the last-minute addition of 1,350 lbs (612 kg) of fuel that was not indicated on the weight and balance sheet. This extra, undocumented weight technically put the aircraft above the maximum landing weight at Rea Point, which was not detected by the crew. The excess weight was only slightly reduced when one of the 31 passengers was kicked off the flight shortly before boarding, apparently due to the discovery of a bottle of whiskey in his luggage. Alcohol was forbidden at Panarctic’s drill sites and apparently the prohibition was very strictly enforced.
Now with 30 passengers and four crew on board, Panarctic Oils flight 416 took off from Edmonton at 20:04 and headed almost due north, into the empty vastness.
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The flight progressed normally until approximately 23:55, when First Officer Hatton made contact with the radio operator at Rea Point while cruising at 25,000 feet, about 100 nautical miles south of their destination. The radio operator reported that the sky was partially overcast with winds at 26 knots gusting to 32, and visibility down to 1 mile (1,600 m) in blowing snow. These conditions were right down at the company minimums, but unless the visibility worsened, they were within rights to continue.
At around 00:05, now on October 30th, Captain Thomson called for the standard top of descent check and prepared to descend to 1,500 feet. Thomson briefed the approach but did not involve Flight Engineer Weyman, per company policy, and Weyman paid little attention. Hatton would later recall nothing unusual about the briefing, except that Thomson was conscious of the weather “hovering at minimums.” Descent was initiated after the briefing concluded at about 00:11.
Moments later, a Twin Otter departing Rea Point reported relatively good conditions, with overcast at 1,200 feet and 5 miles (8,000 m) visibility, except for a feature the pilot described as a “cloud bank” or “fog bank” just south of the airport, over the water. It was not entirely clear what this feature was, but it had apparently been there for some time. Four and a half hours earlier, another pilot encountered the same stationary cloud feature on approach and found that it blocked his view of the airport until he emerged from the leading edge of the cloud. Descending through the cloud proved impossible as it stretched all the way to ground level. It was later determined that this unusual stationary cloud probably consisted of blowing snow kicked up by turbulence associated with an offshore collision between cold air from Melville Island and relatively warmer air over the open sea. At that time the sea surface was frozen near the shore but had yet to freeze further out, where the water was deeper and rougher. The well-defined boundary between sea ice and open water induced this unusually sharp temperature differential that persisted throughout the day without appreciable movement.
The pilots of flight 416 heard their colleague’s report as they were descending between 60 and 65 nautical miles from Rea Point. First Officer Hatton confirmed the report, then spent some time chatting with the Twin Otter pilot over the Rea Point radio frequency, since they were friends. It was around this time that Captain Thomson first mentioned that they might need to penetrate a layer of low clouds in order to land.
Shortly afterward, however, Captain Thomson’s attention was redirected by the appearance of Panarctic’s drilling superintendent, Leonard Storvold, on the Rea Point radio. Storvold had been summoned several minutes earlier, when flight 416 first made contact, because Thomson had indicated a desire to know more about the load they were moving from Rea Point to the Bjorne Peninsula drilling site. Apparently Thomson wanted to know the details of how the aircraft would be loaded and unloaded so that he could start planning their next leg prior to arrival, in order to achieve a better turnaround time. This desire was understandable given the long overnight shift that awaited him, but unfortunately, Storvold didn’t have the information he was looking for. The conversation apparently grew somewhat heated as a result. First Officer Hatton, Flight Engineer Weyman, and the pilot of the Twin Otter all later testified that Thomson appeared to be upset over what he believed were “certain deficiencies in [Panarctic’s] operations.” The exact nature of these deficiencies is not known, but given what I’ve already told you about Panarctic’s operations, there is no shortage of possibilities.
The conversation between Thomson and Storvold continued intermittently throughout the descent. In the meantime, the crew leveled off at about 2,000 feet some 15 or 16 nautical miles from the airport in order to intercept the landing course. Tuning in to the VOR beacon at the airport, the pilots were able to align with the runway using their instruments, although the field was not yet visible. The standard procedure from that point was to descend incrementally to 450 feet, which was the minimum descent altitude, or MDA. Further descent was not permitted unless the runway was in sight.
Level at 2,000, Thomson called for the flaps and approach checklist, during which they descended to 1,500 feet.
When the flight crew first started descending from 25,000 feet, they had selected 1,500 feet in their radio altimeters in order to receive an alert upon reaching the desired altitude. The radio altimeters measure height above the terrain up to a height of about 2,500 feet, and the devices could be set to illuminate an alert light at any height below that value. This was the primary way to remind the crew that they were approaching a target height above the ground in the time before modern autopilots and ground proximity warning systems, which the 1950s-era Electra did not have. In this case, the first target altitude was 1,500 feet, but upon reaching that altitude the flight crew intended to descend further, so First Officer Hatton reset his radio altimeter to alert at 450 feet, which was the MDA. But without any discussion whatsoever, Captain Thomson set his radio altimeter to alert at 300 feet instead.
Descending to 300 feet without seeing the runway would be a violation of standard procedure. The fact that Thomson selected this altitude so readily, and with no discussion, suggests that the action was probably habitual. Most likely, he intended to descend below 450 feet in order to improve his chances of breaking out of the reported cloud bank and spotting the runway. Since they were approaching over the ocean, there was little danger of impacting terrain, so Panarctic pilots appeared to have developed a habit of violating the MDA on approach to Rea Point because it improved their odds of success without taking on any immediately obvious risk.
By 00:24, flight 416 had descended to 1,000 feet, and First Officer Hatton reported to the radio operator that they were 6 nautical miles from the airport. It was only at this point that Captain Thomson stopped his intermittent radio conversation with Storvold. In modern airline operations, continuing this conversation below 10,000 feet would have been considered a violation of the sterile cockpit rule, but this rule didn’t exist yet in 1974, nor would it have automatically applied to Panarctic. However, rule or no, arguing about the loading process down to 1,000 feet on approach would have been seriously distracting and probably degraded Thomson’s situational awareness.
At 800 feet, Thomson called for full flaps and the landing checklist, and the crew lowered the landing gear. Following standard procedure, Hatton called out their altitude in 100-foot increments — 800, 700, 600. Thomson acknowledged each callout, as was his obligation. By 550 feet they were fully configured to land. At that point Hatton called out “100 above minimums,” the standard callout reminding Thomson to prepare to level off at the MDA. Thomson acknowledged, and when Hatton called out “minimums” at 450 feet, he leveled the plane for about 15 seconds. There was no sign of the runway.
Even though Thomson hadn’t mentioned his intention to descend below the MDA, Hatton seemingly knew the drill. He immediately reset his radio altimeter alert to 300 feet and informed Thomson that he had done so. Moments later, Thomson initiated a slow descent toward 300 feet, in violation of the approach minimums.
A short time later, they arrived at 300 feet, and Thomson again leveled off. “Check 300,” he said. In the right seat, Hatton was staring out the window in an attempt to spot the runway or some other landmark. Through the blowing snow, he could just make out the sharp line between the sea ice and the open water, cutting knife-like through the darkness. “Vertical contact,” he announced, informing Thomson that he could see the ground below but not the airport ahead. “It looks like we’re approaching the edge of the ice line,” he said. They were now only 3 nautical miles from the runway.
At that moment, Thomson looked out the window and said, “I believe we are on top of a layer of cloud.”
As far as Hatton could tell, this was not true. The ground was visible out the window despite the presence of blowing snow, and there was no sign of a cloud layer. But before Hatton or Weyman could clarify the matter, Captain Thomson pitched forward so abruptly that the occupants experienced negative G-forces, lifting them up in their seats. The descent was not so steep as to be called a dive, but it was obvious they would hit the ground within 15 seconds if Thomson didn’t stop pushing forward. Weyman swore audibly, and Hatton started calling out relevant instrument readings: “descending out of 300 feet, airspeed 150, vertical speed 1,750 [feet per minute]…”
There was no reaction from Captain Thomson. Hatton continued to read off their altitude, addressing the captain by name, calling out 200 feet and a descent rate of 2,000 feet per minute.
“Dave, he’s going to kill us!” Weyman shouted.
“100 feet!” Hatton called out.
Bizarrely, Captain Thomson was staring straight ahead, his hands on the control column, completely unresponsive. At the last moment, Hatton attempted to take control of the airplane, but it was much too late.
“I put my hand on the left side power levers and Mr . Weyman’s hand was already there and I pushed up the power lever,” Hatton later recounted. “I don’t recall if we called for power or not . My right hand was on the wheel and I tried to pull back the wheel but we were finished: at 100 feet above the ground and descending at 2,000 feet a minute… it was all over.”
The last thing the pilots heard was someone calling out, “blowing snow.” And then, with tremendous force, they struck the ground.
Descending with a 7-degree nose down pitch angle, wings level, and a 2-degree left yaw, the Electra smashed headlong into the sea ice just under two nautical miles short of the runway. Although the ice was only about 20 cm (8 in) thick, they might as well have impacted concrete. The heavy blow snapped the fuselage in two just ahead of the passenger cabin, sending the cockpit careening across the ice, while the remainder of the fuselage broke apart and burst into flames. In the cabin, the passengers experienced a deceleration force of 16 to 20 G’s; seats ripped out of the floor and seatbelts failed, throwing passengers forward and out of the plane as the fuselage disintegrated. Burning debris slid for a great distance before the majority of the aircraft, including three of the four engines and most of the fuselage, broke through the ice and disappeared into the pitch-black waters of the Arctic Ocean. At least six passengers were dragged down with it.
The cockpit, with the pilots still inside, slid across the frozen ocean for nearly 300 meters before it finally ground to a halt. Almost immediately, the ice beneath the cockpit began to give way. Flight Engineer Weyman found that he had survived the crash with only minor injuries, but the others were not so lucky; First Officer Hatton was severely injured and Captain Thomson appeared unconscious. Extricating himself from the wreckage, Weyman grabbed Hatton, who had undone his own seatbelt, and dragged him to safety. But before he could come back for Thomson, the ice beneath the cockpit shattered and it sank into the freezing, dark water.
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At around the time of the crash at 00:27, a sudden squall swept over Rea Point Airport; visibility fell to just 1/8 mile (200 m) and the wind accelerated to 35 knots. The radio operator tried to call flight 416 to warn it of the suddenly deteriorating weather, but there was no reply. For more than ten minutes, he repeatedly tried to make contact with the Electra, without success. Fearing the worst, he summoned Storvold once again, and by 00:50 it became clear to the two men that the aircraft was badly overdue and had possibly crashed. Unsure what to do, Storvold joined forces with the Rea Point base foreman to wake an off-duty Twin Otter pilot to help search for the plane. At around 01:00, they returned to the radio room with the Twin Otter pilot, Mr. Morris, in tow, while the radio operator tried unsuccessfully to locate a signal from the plane’s emergency locator transmitter.
Meanwhile, out on the ice about 3 kilometers from the airport, Flight Engineer Weyman and First Officer Hatton waited desperately, surrounded by pieces of the plane’s cargo and patches of burning wreckage. The temperature was a frigid -24˚C (-11˚F) and the wind blew unceasingly, hurling curtains of ice crystals across the featureless expanse. Weyman knew that they would not survive long without shelter, but there was nowhere to hide. Instead, he managed to find a parka amid the debris and wrapped it around First Officer Hatton, who he feared was close to death. In the distance, he could hear the cries of injured passengers somewhere out in the darkness, but as ten minutes turned into thirty minutes, and thirty minutes turned into an hour, these cries faded away until the only sound was the wind.
At the airport, with the search for an emergency transmitter coming up empty, the Twin Otter pilot, Morris, suggested that they conduct an aerial search using his aircraft instead. With Storvold as lookout in the right seat, Morris taxied out in the Twin Otter and took off at 01:35, heading south to check the approach path where flight 416 had last reported its position.
It didn’t take them long to find what they were looking for. Less than two minutes after takeoff, they spotted burning wreckage glowing in the distance. It was obvious that something horrific had occurred, and at first what they saw left them bereft of hope. But as they approached the scene, they were greeted by the astonishing sight of Flight Engineer Weyman standing on the ice amid the scattered debris, very much alive and apparently unhurt.
It was not possible to land the Twin Otter on the relatively thin sea ice, so Morris and Storvold were forced to turn back to Rea Point, where their report of survivors sent the airport staff into frenzied preparations for what promised to be a difficult rescue. By the time a team managed to reach the site on foot, more than two hours had passed since the crash. Even after such a long period of time, Weyman was reasonably healthy, but First Officer Hatton was in grave condition, kept conscious only by Weyman’s continuous efforts to prevent him from slipping away.
As Weyman and Hatton were evacuated from the scene, the rescue party began searching for any additional survivors. Despite the long odds, they managed to find one passenger still clinging onto life nearby, having been ejected from the cabin before it sank. But after this third survivor was hurried back to the base, the rescuers found only desolation. The rest of the people strewn across the frozen sea were already dead.
Unfortunately, the surviving passenger later joined them. He made it as far as the medevac flight to Edmonton, but he died before reaching the hospital.
Autopsy results would later suggest that out of the 31 passengers and crew seated in the main cabin, only 15 died instantly on impact. Of the remaining 16, six died by drowning and were found on the ocean floor, 33 meters beneath the ice. Five others died of their injuries before any hope of rescue. But five passengers survived on the ice for some time after the crash, at least 15 minutes, only to succumb as they were left too weak to withstand the Arctic conditions. No studies were undertaken to determine how quickly rescuers could have theoretically arrived, so it was impossible to say whether a more rapid response might have saved additional lives. But it was clear that Panarctic personnel responded to the disappearance of the airplane in a slow and confused manner that significantly increased the time until rescue. Because Rea Point was a privately operated rather than commercial airport, it was not required to have a disaster response plan, and Panarctic had not developed any procedure for its staff to follow in the event of a major aircraft accident. The response was disjointed and lethargic primarily because no rescue vehicles or equipment were on standby and none of the staff knew what to do.
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In 1974, air accidents in Canada were subject to two separate investigations, consisting of a technical investigation by Ministry of Transport experts, followed by a public inquiry led by a judge, in which the Ministry of Transport findings represented only one portion of the evidence under consideration. In this case, the public inquiry was held in Yellowknife and Edmonton under the supervision of Judge W. A. Stevenson, who wrote his own final report on the crash. The outcomes of these two investigations were not always in total agreement with one another. The differences of opinion between Stevenson and the Ministry of Transport will be examined in detail where they appear.
Shortly after the accident, career investigators from the Ministry of Transport’s Central Region received early morning phone calls summoning them to one of the most remote areas on earth. But when duty calls, accident investigators do not shy from the challenge, and within hours a team was on its way to Rea Point on board Panarctic’s remaining Electra.
The on-scene portion of the investigation was one of the most challenging in Canadian history. The majority of the aircraft lay 33 meters under the Arctic Ocean, and what wreckage remained on the surface could only be accessed by walking across thin, unstable ice. The investigators had to be roped together in pairs in case anyone fell through the ice, and in most areas the number of personnel was limited to the low single digits. Rea Point staff had left several rifles at the scene for the investigators to defend themselves against polar bears, but the guns had frozen solid and wouldn’t fire. Wire-tied labels used to mark human remains for documentation and recovery froze solid and snapped in half; masking tape had the same problem. Small, white arctic foxes were constantly underfoot, attracted by the aircraft’s cargo, which included 1,000 lbs (450 kg) of chocolate chip cookies that now lay scattered throughout the crash site.
The body recovery team discovered that many of the victims had been frozen into the ice and could only be removed by hacking them out by hand. To recover those victims located on the sea floor, specialized cold water divers and a hyperbaric chamber had to be flown in from Vancouver. These divers were also tasked with recovering the black boxes and videotaping the wreckage in situ on the bottom of the ocean. The team lacked the budget to recover the entire aircraft, but they were able to raise the cockpit, which contained the intact remains of Captain Thomson, the last victim to be recovered. His cause of death was ruled as drowning, but it was noted that he had not worn his shoulder harness, resulting in a head injury that left him unconscious and probably prevented him from escaping.
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Panarctic’s Electras were not required to carry any flight recorders, but CF-PAB had a flight data recorder and a cockpit voice recorder anyway, probably installed by a prior commercial operator. But when investigators opened the recorders for analysis, they found that the cockpit voice recorder tape had been improperly spliced and was not recording during the accident flight. This huge disappointment was only compounded when they discovered that the flight data recorder was partially faulty as well. The FDR was an older model that inscribed five parameters into a rotating spool of foil, but the heading stylus was broken and the speed and altitude data made little sense. Investigators found that when the FDR was installed, the cables feeding static air pressure data and airspeed data had been inadvertently swapped, scrambling the calculations. There was evidence that Panarctic had been warned about the swapped cables, but the company never attempted to fix the problem. Experts were ultimately able to painstakingly reverse engineer most of the flight’s airspeed and altitude data, albeit with a low degree of accuracy.
If investigators hoped to have a tape of the pilots’ radio communications, they were out of luck there as well. Rea Point radio traffic was not recorded as it would have been at a commercial airport, robbing them of another key source of evidence.
Examining the recovered debris and the video footage of the unrecovered wreckage, investigators could find no indications of any in flight mechanical failures. The flight controls in the tail were fully intact with no apparent damage. Only one engine was recovered, but from the footage it was apparent that all four engines were generating considerable power when they impacted the ice, severing most of the propeller blades at their roots. Structural failure was also ruled out, since all the major portions of the aircraft were found at the crash site.
The limited available flight data suggested that nothing was out of the ordinary until less than a minute before impact, when the flight briefly leveled off at the MDA of 450 feet before continuing its descent. But the Electra didn’t descend steadily into the ground as one would expect in a classic case of controlled flight into terrain. Instead, after leveling off momentarily at 300 feet, the descent suddenly steepened for about 10 to 15 seconds until the plane crashed into the ice. The descent rate was significantly greater than would ever normally be used at such a low altitude. But if a mechanical failure didn’t cause the sudden descent, what did?
If the crash had killed all 34 occupants, the case might well have remained unsolved. But the investigation’s saving grace was the improbable survival of two of the three flight deck crewmembers, who were able to provide independent accounts of what happened. Weyman was interviewed shortly after the accident, and while Hatton was hospitalized in critical condition for a considerable time, he was eventually able to tell his side of the story too. The two crewmembers’ accounts largely corroborated one another, increasing their credibility in the eyes of the investigators. And not only did the accounts agree, they also pointed directly to the cause of the crash: the late Captain Thomson.
Both Weyman and Hatton recalled that as they were nearing 300 feet, Thomson suddenly declared that they were above a cloud layer, then pitched sharply down and did not respond, verbally or otherwise, to their exhortations of alarm. For several seconds, Hatton tried to get Thomson to snap out of it, but by the time he realized that he needed to take direct action himself, it was far too late.
So why did Thomson suddenly do something so plainly dangerous? Did he genuinely believe that he needed to enter a rapid descent? Or was he incapacitated, mentally or physically? Could it even have been a suicidal act? Investigators had to examine all of these possibilities.
Although suicide might strike the reader as a serious possibility, it was actually ruled out rather quickly, because there simply wasn’t any evidence that Thomson wanted to crash the plane. In fact, everything suggested the opposite. He was conscientious in his flight planning, and up until moments before the accident he actively sought information that would make their turnaround easier. Furthermore, he stated a reason for his actions — they were above a cloud layer — just before he pitched down, shedding some light on his thought process, even though the statement made no sense in context.
Investigators did examine Thomson’s personal life for evidence of a motive, but they found nothing. His marriage was stable, his finances were good, and he had hobbies that he enjoyed. No one who knew him was aware of any mental health issues. There is some disagreement over whether he was experiencing work-related stress — Judge Stevenson wrote categorically that he was not, but the Ministry of Transport reported otherwise, writing that Thomson had expressed increasing dissatisfaction with the type of flying he was doing for Panarctic, which he considered dangerous. He had apparently conveyed a desire to find a new job or possibly even leave aviation altogether. However, to conclude that this alleged job stress drove him to suicide would be a leap of logic unsupported by common sense.
Instead, investigators focused on Thomson’s final words, as reported by Weyman and Hatton. On the surface, declaring “I believe we are on top of a layer of cloud” and then descending sharply could indicate a belief that the aircraft was too high on approach. Perhaps Thomson believed he was much higher than he was, and that he would overshoot the airport if he didn’t rapidly descend beneath an imagined cloud layer in time to spot the runway. There was some circumstantial evidence to support this idea. For instance, the boundary between the sea ice and the black water could have looked like the edge of a cloud layer. Additionally, the sharp boundary between colder and warmer air at the edge of the sea ice would have refracted incoming light, making the angle between the aircraft and the terrain appear steeper than it actually was.
However, stronger evidence contradicted this hypothesis. According to Hatton, Thomson acknowledged his altitude callouts throughout the approach, all the way down to 300 feet. In fact, Thomson and Hatton both made a conscious decision to violate the MDA and descend to a very low altitude. Furthermore, while Hatton’s radio altimeter was found still set to alert at 300 feet, Thomson’s had been reset to just 150, indicating that he planned to descend even lower. Both the Ministry of Transport and Judge Stevenson concluded, based on this evidence, that Thomson knew he was very close to the ground at the moment he pitched down, eliminating the possibility that he was mistaken about their altitude.
Both Judge Stevenson and the Ministry of Transport agreed that pitching down so steeply, knowing they were only 300 feet above the ground, was completely irrational. Even if he thought there was a cloud layer below him, even if he wanted to descend to 150 feet, even if there was an optical illusion, none of it could outweigh the fact that he had just moments earlier acknowledged that they were at 300 feet. It is at this point that one begins to suspect Thomson was afflicted by some kind of medical emergency.
The possibility of pilot incapacitation loomed large from the first stages of the investigation. The autopsy of Captain Thomson was awaited with great interest. Had he suffered some kind of medical event that clouded his judgment or rendered him unresponsive to stimuli? Was he even conscious during the final descent?
In a surprising twist, the autopsy revealed that Thomson suffered from a fatty and inflamed liver that had swelled to twice its normal weight, a condition of which he was apparently unaware. Even his wife, who was a nurse, had noticed nothing amiss.
The Ministry of Transport described the inflammation of Thomson’s liver as “very severe” and listed possible side effects, including low potassium, low blood sugar, and heart arrhythmia while under stress, which could lead to incapacitation. This degree of liver damage was normally associated with excessive alcohol consumption, but Judge Stevenson concluded that Thomson was not an especially heavy drinker, at least by Canadian standards.
At this point considerable disagreement arose as to the causes and consequences of Thomson’s liver disease. The Ministry of Transport wrote in its report that his fatty liver could have led to low blood sugar, or hypoglycemia, the side effects of which can include confusion, clumsiness, loss of consciousness, and even seizures or death. Possible hypoglycemia was listed as a factor contributing to Thomson’s irrational pitch inputs. On the other hand, Judge Stevenson entirely discounted the possibility of hypoglycemia, writing in his report that two doctors who testified before the inquiry believed low blood sugar was not a factor. His report does not mention what logic the doctors used to reach this conclusion.
In a lecture hosted by the Canadian Aviation Historical Society, a third possibility was raised by Dr. Olaf Skjenna, the former chief medical officer for Air Canada and a former Ministry of Transport medical specialist who worked on the crash of Panarctic Oils flight 416. Dr. Skjenna agreed with Stevenson’s conclusion that Thomson was not a heavy drinker, but unlike the judge, he proposed an alternative theory. According to him, Captain Thomson ran a “hobby farm” (presumably, a farm that he ran for fun instead of for money), where he was known to clean farm implements using a chemical cleaner containing carbon tetrachloride. This highly toxic chemical was legal in 1974 but is now banned in most applications, not only because it contributed to depletion of the ozone layer, but also because repeated exposure causes a litany of side effects including but not limited to cancer, abnormal brain function, and — crucially — liver disease.
In Skjenna’s view, Thomson’s diseased liver could have resulted in a condition called “protein toxicity.” His theory was that Thomson’s damaged liver was unable to properly filter certain harmful compounds found in meat protein after consuming a steak dinner shortly before the top of descent. Effectively, Skjenna claimed, Thomson was poisoned by an ordinary slice of beef, leading to abnormal brain functioning and severe incapacitation.
However, as far as I can tell, protein toxicity is normally caused by degeneration of the kidneys, not the liver, even though the liver does play a role in protein metabolism. To resolve this question, I consulted a practicing medical doctor, who concluded that the steak dinner was probably a red herring, because meat consumption doesn’t typically cause problems in patients with liver disease until they’re on the cusp of liver failure. Instead, the doctor suggested that the most obvious direct link between a damaged liver and cognitive function would be a condition called hepatic encephalopathy. A patient suffering from this condition would experience severe cognitive impairment leading to total incapacitation or even death. However, hepatic encephalopathy is apparently associated with alcohol-induced fatty liver disease, and is “vanishingly rare” as a side effect of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. Furthermore, hepatic encephalopathy sets in slowly over hours or days, which is incompatible with Thomson’s apparently normal behavior up until the last few seconds before he dived the plane into the ground.
The doctor also pointed out to me that the level of medical understanding demonstrated in the accident reports was quite poor. Medicine is a field that has advanced considerably in the last 50 years, and perhaps nothing better underscores this than the investigators’ attempts to determine whether Thomson experienced fear prior to death by measuring the levels of adrenaline byproducts in his organs. This technique does not work and is pseudoscientific in nature.
Despite this, my friend the modern medical doctor and Judge Stevenson in 1974 both independently concluded that Thomson’s liver was likely not the reason for his incapacitation. It was difficult to find any liver-related side effect that would cause a pilot who had been acting normally to suddenly make an irrational statement, pitch over into a dangerously steep descent, and stare straight ahead all the way into the ground without responding to stimuli. Instead Stevenson suggested, on the advice of expert testimony, that the most likely explanation for Thomson’s behavior was the rapid onset of some kind of seizure. The doctor I consulted proposed some more specific possibilities, including an absence seizure (for American readers, see recent public appearances by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell), or a transient ischemic attack (TIA), which is basically a mild stroke. Either of these events could have caused Thomson to mentally and physically “freeze up” without leaving any easily detectable post-mortem evidence.
Still, some discrepancies remain. For instance, Hatton and Weyman both stated that Thomson’s pitch down appeared deliberate and that he was not slumping into the controls. Stevenson reconciled this issue by proposing that the incapacitating event was increasing in severity, already influencing his behavior, when he consciously began the ill-advised maneuver, only to become fully incapacitated after he had already started moving the yoke. However, much like the seizure theory as a whole, this hypothesis can neither be proven nor disproven. There is no hard evidence for the seizure theory except that almost everything else has been ruled out.
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Regardless of the exact nature of Captain Thomson’s incapacitation, there are additional factors worth mentioning.
First of all, the role of fatigue should not be discounted in a crash that took place at 27 minutes past midnight after four and a half hours spent flying an antiquated four-engine propeller plane into a remote region under conditions of darkness. If Panarctic Oils was regularly handing its pilots 12-hour overnight shifts flying between sketchy ice runways in the Arctic, then the cumulative effects of overwork and lost sleep could have significantly impaired the pilots’ performance.
Secondly, although its significance was discounted by Stevenson, one does wonder whether Thomson’s testy exchange with Storvold somehow contributed to the medical event that probably befell him just minutes later. My medical knowledge is too limited to say whether such a connection is even remotely plausible. However, it seems clear that the extended conversation lasting until 1,000 feet on final approach would at least have harmed Thomson’s situational awareness even if he didn’t suffer a seizure or stroke.
In the end, the Ministry of Transport cited a combination of hypoglycemia due to liver disease, fatigue, confusing environmental conditions, and stress as factors that possibly contributed to the captain’s actions. Tired after a long day with more still to go, disoriented by the distracting and frustrating conversation, baffled by the view out the window, and perhaps experiencing mounting medical discomfort, Thomson might have simply dissociated from reality. Stranger things have happened.
Judge Stevenson, meanwhile, concluded that the sole cause of the crash was the “very severe” medical incapacitation of the captain, the nature of which was not determined.
It must be kept in mind that even though the event that befell Captain Thomson might have been unpredictable, it didn’t happen in a vacuum. Both reports cited operational problems at Panarctic Oils among the contributing factors to the accident, and with good reason.
One major issue was the habitual violation of MDAs by Panarctic pilots. Even though there was no high terrain south of Rea Point airfield, the MDA exists not only for terrain separation purposes but also to provide a margin for error commensurate with the accuracy of the available navigational aids. By deliberately descending below the MDA, the pilots gave themselves less room for contingencies. If they had remained at 450 feet instead of descending to 300, then First Officer Hatton would have had 50% more time to regain control of the aircraft.
Investigators noted that flight crews might have felt indirect pressure to land at the destination in marginal conditions, incentivizing these kinds of violations, because Panarctic tended to select alternate airports that didn’t present an attractive diversion option and did not always meet the standards used by scheduled airlines. In fairness, the remote Arctic archipelago has very few well-equipped airports to choose from, but somehow scheduled airlines like Canadian North manage to do it.
In any case, the extra margin afforded by compliance with the MDA might not have altered the outcome all by itself, but it wasn’t the only contributing factor. It was also apparent that Hatton was hesitant to seize control from his captain, and Flight Engineer Weyman was late to speak up, which substantially delayed Hatton’s recovery attempt. This was partly due to Panarctic’s hierarchical cockpit culture, which did not empower lower ranking crewmembers to assert responsibility for the safety of the aircraft. This was especially problematic in an environment where most pilots had no prior experience with multi-crew cockpits.
Additionally, neither Panarctic nor most airlines at the time trained their pilots recognize and respond to signs of incapacitation in a fellow crewmember. Some airlines today teach pilots to follow a “two callout rule,” under which the pilot should consider a colleague incapacitated if they fail to respond to two consecutive safety-related callouts. On flight 416, Captain Thomson ignored significantly more than two warnings from First Officer Hatton before the latter decided to take control. Once again, the two callout rule would not by itself have altered the outcome, but these factors must be considered cumulatively. Certainly it is imaginable that if Thomson had suddenly pitched down while flying no lower than the MDA, with an assertive first officer trained to recognize signs of incapacitation, the crash might have been narrowly avoided.
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Taken in total, the findings of the investigation reflected poorly on Panarctic Oils. But the company’s reputation was harmed not just by the crash itself, but also by its response, which was criticized as insensitive. CBC journalist David Forsee recalled that when he arrived at Rea Point shortly after the accident, he was told by Panarctic management that he had no right to be there, and company staff were instructed not to speak to him. In a heavy-handed attempt to prevent information about the crash from leaking, Panarctic management had placed a phone blackout on base personnel, which also prevented the staff from calling their families to inform them that they were not on the plane. Incensed by the blackout and worried that their families thought they were dead, the staff eventually broke the press embargo. CBC aired the story shortly afterward on national television, provoking widespread public anger at Panarctic.
The eventual fate of Panarctic Oils was equally illustrious. The company eventually struck oil on Cameron Island and managed to export around 2.6 million barrels to markets in eastern Canada, but this paltry production did little to change the picture for the Canadian oil industry. Proposals to export natural gas from the Drake Point field on Melville Island using ice-breaking LNG carriers never materialized and little or none of the gas was ever sold to customers. After oil prices collapsed in the 1980s, extracting oil and natural gas from the remote archipelago was no longer cost effective, and Panarctic drilled its last well in 1986. The wells on Cameron Island continued to produce crude oil for export until 1996, but eventually even these were shut down, and the company was officially dissolved in 2000. In its wake, many local residents were left with bitter memories of contamination, dead wildlife, and official indifference.
The surviving crewmembers of flight 416 had a somewhat happier end. Although he ended up losing both hands to frostbite, First Officer David Hatton not only survived, he actually flew airplanes again, thanks to a pair of innovative prostheses that allowed him to get back behind the wheel of a Twin Otter. Despite all it took from him, it seems the universe did grant him some small measure of justice in the end.
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Looking back from 50 years later, it could be argued that the crash of flight 416 embodied the broader folly of Panarctic. Regardless of what possessed Captain Brian Thomson in his final moments, the stage for disaster was set by Panarctic’s bare minimum approach to safety, from its failure to create and enforce standard procedures, to its poorly trained crews, to its lack of emergency planning. The company’s sole mission was to find a way to profitably extract resources from an environment actively hostile to human life, a goal that it considered existential. If Panarctic didn’t find oil and didn’t bring it to market, then tens of millions of taxpayer dollars and private capital would have been expended for nothing. In such an enterprise, safety was not the highest priority. But in the end, minimizing expenditures on safety still didn’t stop the company from failing to achieve its purpose. It did however leave 32 men dead, robbing 32 families of their fathers, brothers, and sons.
Prior to its closure, Panarctic Oils abandoned its Arctic bases, disassembling every last prefabricated building and hauling back every drilling rig, until nothing remained. Today, the only remnants of the once bustling Rea Point facility are a few level foundations and the long scar of the runway, slicing through the barren dirt, half-buried in the snow. Melville island once more lies uninhabited, just as it had been since time immemorial, until that brief, heady period when mankind thought it could conquer that cold, barren rock at the top of the world.
At the windswept place once known as Rea Point, a lonely, seldom visited memorial now stands, featuring a plaque at the feet of an Inuit inuksuk, staring out at the frozen sea. The plaque lists the names of the 32 victims as “pioneers of Canada’s last frontier.” A message lies inscribed above: “THEY CAME TO PREPARE THE LAND.” But the land they gave their lives to prepare now lies just as empty as it was before they came. So what did they die for, when the alluring gleam of the black gold turned out to be a mirage?
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Don’t forget to listen to Controlled Pod Into Terrain, my podcast (with slides!), where I discuss aerospace disasters with my cohosts Ariadne and J! Check out our channel here, and listen to our latest episode on the dramatic forced landing of TACA flight 110. Alternatively, download audio-only versions via RSS.com, or look us up on Spotify!
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