A female student pilot and another pilot about to get commercial license were both k!lled when two single-engine planes smashed into each other in mid-air on Tuesday morning, July 8.
The collision occurred at around 8.45am when the two student pilots were practicing takeoffs and landings in small Cessna planes at Harv’s Air Pilot training school in Steinbach, in the Canadian province of Manitoba, the school’s president, Adam Penner, told the CBC.
He explained that it appeared that both pilots were trying to land at the same time and collided a few hundred yards from the small runway.
The Cessnas are equipped with radios, but Penner said it appears the two pilots did not see each other approaching.
“We don’t understand how they could get so close together,” Penner said. “We’ll have to wait for the investigation.”
One of the pilots was just a couple of months into training, he noted, while the other nearly had a commercial license. Both were pronounced de@d at the scene.
Authorities have not yet identified the victims, however family members confirmed that one of the pilots was 20-year-old Savanna May Royes, whom they called the “essence of pure joy.”
“Savanna’s faith and laughter will forever touch everyone who was lucky enough to have known her during her short life,” the family said in a statement.
Lucille and Nathaniel Plett, who live near the flight school, described the horrifying sound they heard on Tuesday morning.
“We heard some kind of crackling, banging sound and then the engine turned off – I recognized that because sometimes they do stunts around here and they turn the engine off, but they turn it back on,” Lucille told Global News.
“Next ting we heard is a big crash and a big bang… and we knew this isn’t a stunt, this is something serious.”
Nathaniel said he then realized there had been a plane crash, and when he went outside he saw “a pillar of black smoke coming up and a little bit later [we] heard another bang and there was an even bigger pop of black smoke.”
