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Transport Minister Marc Garneau has asked his department to look into the practicability of requiring flight data and voice recorders in smaller aircraft.
“We’ve been looking at a number of things for quite a while, but there’s no question that I think it’s a good time for us to look at the issue,” he told reporters after a cabinet meeting on Parliament Hill on Oct. 18.
Although Transport Canada has been assessing the issue for some time, the renewed focus has evidently been precipitated by the Oct. 13 crash of a 1974 Cessna Citation near Kelowna, B.C. The accident resulted in the deaths of former Federal Cabinet Minister Jim Prentice and three others.
Without specifically referring to that crash, Garneau said that when the Transportation Safety Board first considered recommending recorders on smaller aircraft, “there was very little choice in terms or selection,” and the available units were “extremely expensive.”
He said new technology “has allowed us to produce cheaper versions that hopefully are still sturdy enough to withstand a potential crash, so I’ve instructed the ministry to look at it. . . . So we’ll look at that and then we’ll make decisions about whether we extend regulations.”
When asked how long that might take, Garneau suggested that the review would take at least a “few months” and that he was prepared to consider a legislated requirement. “I can’t predict exactly how long that will take,” he said.
Garneau conceded that most small aircraft are flown by one pilot, which might minimize the need for voice recorders. “But . . . you can have an airplane certified for a single pilot and you can have passengers onboard; they could be talking,” he noted. “Certainly, the talk that goes on with air traffic control is monitored anyway, so I think it’s less important than in an airplane with two pilots required, but these are all things we’re going to look at.”
