A woman in her 20s has been tragically killed by a landing aircraft at an airfield in Quebec on Monday, while she was mowing the lawn near the airfield.
Authorities at Quebec Provincial Police were alerted on Monday at 12:30pm of the incident, which happened on Route 125 Saint-Esprit, in the Lanaudiere region of Quebec, roughly 75 kilometres north of Montreal, according to spokesperson Marc Tessier.
The unidentified 27-year-old woman worked at a parachute landing field providing maintenance services. The field is often used for private aircraft landings and a skydiving company, according to Tessier.
“What we can understand is that the woman was on a tractor mowing the lawn and when the plane did its descent to land on the airstrip, the airplane hit the woman,” he told CNN.
It appeared to be a small trainer aircraft like the Soviet Yakovlev Yak 52 or the Nanchang CJ-6, a Chinese training aircraft often flown by Canadian pilots, according Chris Krepsi, a spokesperson of the Transport Safety Board of Canada (TBS).
Krepsi said at the time of the incident, the weather “was appropriate for visual flight rules flying”, only with light winds and minimal clouds at 4,000 feet.
Tessier said the woman was transported to the hospital, however was pronounced dead shortly after. The pilot driving the aircraft was also taken to hospital and treated for shock due to the incident.
The TBS has currently launched an investigation at the crash site to identify information and determine what happened.
This incident is not isolated, as it follows an onslaught of major aircraft crashes over the past week, resulting in numerous deaths globally.
Over the weekend, a 47-year-old Boeing 737-200 freighter crashed and sank off the coast of Hawaii due to engine troubles. Miraculously, the two pilots on board were rescued from the water and there were no fatalities, however, the remains of the aircraft are still being discovered.
Over the same weekend, a Philippine Air Force Lockheed C-130 was carrying troops and crashed in one of the country’s southern islands, killing 53 confirmed passengers so far.
The C-130 Hercules transport aircraft was flying from Laguindingan to Jolo carrying 92 people in total, most of whom were military personnel, when it overshot the runway at Jolo Airport in the province of Sulu.
According to authorities, the aircraft, registration 5125, failed to touch down, and struggled to regain enough power and height before it crashed into trees and caught on fire at nearby Patikul.
Only yesterday another disaster was reported, as an Antonov An-26 passenger aircraft crashed in the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia’s far east, with all 28 people on board feared dead, according to local authorities.
The Soviet-era twin-engine turboprop aircraft, registered RA-26085, was performing flight PTK-251 from regional capital Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky to a small village in the peninsula’s north, Palana, when it is said to have lost contact with air traffic control minutes before its scheduled landing.
