Pilot killed in Brant County plane crash

(Updated for 11pm)

Friends and investigators are puzzled by a deadly plane crash in Brantford today. CHCH news has learned the plane was being flown by John Pearson — a former Canadian air force and commercial pilot — who was involved in the violent crash close to the Brantford airport in a plane he built himself.

The scattered debris from Pearson’s Skybolt shows the force of the collision — and how hard his plane came down. It slammed into the ground very close to an empty warehouse at the edge of the airport. The crash happened around 11:15 this morning, just across the road from Confederation Freezers — a large refrigeration warehouse that was filled with employees at the time.

Investigators from the Transportation Safety Board were on scene quickly. But don’t have any answers this early into their work

Ewan Tasker is with the Transportation Safety Board: “What we can see from the scene are that the impact marks are pretty hard. The aircraft did hit the ground pretty hard.”

This is some YouTube video Pearson had posted on a bi-plane forum website eight years ago of his plane in action. It was taken in 2006. In the thread you can see how proud he is of the work he did putting his own plane together.

One of Pearson’s friends and fellow pilots telling CHCH news he’s mystified as to what went wrong today — pointing out how much experience Pearson had in the air in his life.

Witnesses in the area couldn’t believe what happened.

Terry Darling: “I was sitting there having a coffee and I saw a plane coming down at a very steep angle, like 45 degrees. Then he went behind the trees. Then all of a sudden, I knew he had to have crashed. I saw a big puff of smoke, called 911 and walked down there. And all I could see was the burnt frame — the body itself was gone.”

Al Risi: “A big rumble. And then all of a sudden I saw an explosion. And I came out through the door, and there was a big fire.”

The plane reportedly left an airstrip near Paris, this morning, but was registered to fly out of Brantford.

Ewan Tasker of the TSB says his team will take a look at everything they can — before determining how Pearson’s plane went down so hard so far — but so close to the runway:
“We’re still gathering information as to what exactly it was doing prior to the crash. We’ve heard a couple of stories, so we still don’t have anything quite nailed down.”