The Transportation Safety Board says that following a thorough investigation, it has found that a loss of control during a training routine resulted in the death of a student and instructor with the Springbank Air Training College last year.
Emergency crews were called to the scene of a plane crash in a field near Calaway Park on October 26, 2017 at about 10:00 a.m.
The TSB says that the plane took off at 9:50 a.m. from the Springbank Airport with the intent to conduct a multi-engine training flight prior to a flight test for the student.
Approximately a minute after takeoff, the plane proceeded south of the airport and then entered into a roll and then a steep descending left turn before crashing into the ground and catching fire.
Amir Hosseini, the student and his flight instructor were both killed in the crash. Reports say that Hosseini had 140 hours of flight training and his instructor, who has not been named, had over 2,000 hours of experience.
The agency says that the plane, a Piper PA-34-200T Seneca II registered to the Springbank Air Training College, did not possess a cockpit voice recorder or flight data recorder. Neither device was required to be installed as per regulations.
Without those two instruments, the TSB says that it can only surmise that the instructor and student were conducting a simulated left-engine failure upon takeoff.
Officials say that sufficient power was not provided to the right engine to achieve a proper climb, resulting in the fatal crash.
Following the incident, the Springbank Air Training College updated its procedures specifying minimum altitudes for engine failure exercises as well as the procedures for the exercises themselves.
The TSB also says that the crash highlights the need for mandatory installation of lightweight flight-recording systems on commercial aircraft currently not required to carry them.
