Two Dead In Small Plane Crash Identified

A small plane crash in the Port Perry area claimed two lives Friday morning.

The craft went down at Greenbank Airport, in the Highway 7 and Highway 47 area northeast of Uxbridge around 9:45am.

The plane, believed to be an ultralight, crashed at the small airport equipped with a 2,700-foot grass landing strip.

The victims, Micky Jovkovic and a passenger from South Africa identified as “Glen,” were both killed when the plane suddenly went down in a farmer’s field. Glen may have been Micky’s brother-in law and was being taken on a tour of the area, a sight seeing trip he never really got to start.  

Experts are still trying to assess why the craft went down but it appears to have run into mechanical troubles on take-off and the pilot’s efforts to return to the airfield left the craft too low to recover.

Jovkovic was well known in flight circles and actually owned the airport with his wife. P eople in the community are already responding to the stunning news. “He fueled his aircraft lots here so he’s got lots of experience flying that particular aircraft,” said one man who claimed to know the pilot.

Aviation expert Phil Durdsy, who’s also Director of Training with Flightline Training Services, spoke to CityNews.

“It was an ultralight aircraft,” he said. “That’s why there’s very little debris. There’s just a frame left on it. An ultralight aircraft is fabric covered. So if there is a fire after an accident, then the fabric will just go up in flames and you lose most of the aircraft. Unfortunately that’s what happened.”

Pilot James Ireland has flown in and out of Greenbank Airport. Here’s his insight into runway conditions there:

I have landed and taken off at Greenbank aerodrome in a Cessna 172-SP using runway 16 a few summers ago during my flight training.  Greenbank is located about five nautical miles northeast of the far northeast corner of an area used heavily for flight training purposes.  Lake Scugog is visible from only a few thousand feet above ground level, and the area is lightly populated. 

The area is referred to as “the Claremont Practice Area” after the town of Claremont near the centre of this pilot practice area.  It is approximately 175 square nautical miles in size, and is divided into four areas; “A” (Alpha), “B” (Bravo), “C” (Charlie) and “D” (Delta).  It is marked on aviation charts and there is a standard radio frequency to monitor and communicate your activities on while using it. The Claremont Practice Area is used for all manner of training exercises, including the occasional landing at Greenbank to practice landing on short and soft runways.  Such runways require special techniques to maximize the safety of their use.

Greenbank has two intersecting turf runways; 16/34 and 03/21.  The runway numbers refer to the magnetic compass direction of the runways to the nearest 10 degrees (the last 0 is dropped for the numbering of the runway).  This is true of runways large and small, almost everywhere you go.  And since each runway points in two directions each runway has two numbers, 180 degrees apart.

A flight in to Greenbank is not like flying into a larger airport.  It is what is called an “uncontrolled aerodrome” simply meaning there is no control tower or ATC (Air Traffic Control) control of the facility.  It doesn’t mean “out-of-control” however.  Flying around an uncontrolled aerodrome is an orderly process of making a series of radio calls on a standard frequency to all aircraft and any ground vehicles near or on the aerodrome, announcing your position with respect to the aerodrome, and your intentions.

As you enter the traffic circuit pattern you continue watching for other aircraft and listening for any radio calls on the frequency, while announcing your position in the circuit.  You do this whether you think there are any other aircraft there or not.  You keep making your calls until you have landed and left the runway.  And you do the same thing again before you enter the runway and while you are taking off, climbing, and leaving the area.  Pilots usually monitor and communicate on the assigned frequency when they are within 5 miles or so and up to about 3000 feet or more above the aerodrome’s elevation.

Another consideration at Greenbank is choosing your runway for landing.  With ATC assistance at a large airport a pilot is told what runway is in use.  Although a pilot can ultimately ask to use any runway at almost any time at even a large towered airport, it is very uncommon to use a runway other that the one the tower tells you to.  With no tower or ATC at Greenbank you must make this decision yourself, and it is important which one you choose, because you want to land into the wind in order to keep your landing distance to a minimum; landing with a tailwind can be disastrous!

The way you do this at Greenbank and other uncontrolled aerodromes is to overfly the airport above circuit altitude and look down at the windsock to see which way the wind is blowing on the ground.  I can vividly remember looking down from about 2000 feet above Greenbank for the orange windsocks.  The windsock told me that the wind was coming from the southeast that day, so I chose runway 16 to land as close to into the wind as possible, and proceeded to descend to enter the rectangular circuit pattern.

It was actually a very nice touchdown compared to the usually solid chirpiness of a paved or concrete runway; very soft and gentle, and since the grass gives you quite a bit of  friction the plane slows down more quickly without much braking.  With turf you must be a little more careful in an aircraft with a nose wheel, since if there are wet or soft areas you cannot see the nose wheel can dig in and perhaps flip the aircraft over.  So it’s important to use good technique, soft-field landing technique at Greenbank, approaching and touching down at a very specific airspeed defined in the aircraft’s P.O.H. (pilot operating handbook), and keep the nose wheel up as long as possible on the roll out, and keep the weight on it as light as possible at all times while the aircraft is moving with extra back-pressure on the yoke.  You also have to be careful not to run the engine too high while not moving to avoid sucking loose matter into the engine or through the prop disc, which can cause damage.

My take-off from Greenbank used a combination of soft-field and short-field take-off (don’t want to dig in!) techniques; lots of back pressure the whole time the plane is moving to keep the nose wheel light or just off the ground, even during the take-off run.  Done correctly the plane looks like it’s doing a small “wheelie” with the nose wheel a few inches off the ground until flying speed is reached, and then you lift off and aim to climb out at the best angle of climb speed (another specific speed in the P.O.H.) until all obstacles at the end of the runway have been cleared, then the nose can be dropped a bit to accelerate and climb up to your cruising altitude.   The whole time you must watch carefully for other aircraft, monitor the frequency, and make position call until well clear of the area.

My flight back from Greenbank to Toronto City Centre Airport (TCAA) took about 25 minutes; Greenbank is about 45 nautical miles from TCAA, and on most good weather days the CN Tower will be visible the whole flight back.

A problem that I am fortunate enough to have never encountered is engine failure on take-off.  In a small single engine aircraft if there is engine or control trouble on take-off up to about 750 to 1000 feet above ground level, there is little a pilot can do safely except keep the aircraft under control and try to land somewhere more or less straight ahead.  The problem is straight ahead might not be a great place to land, and most pilots never have the opportunity to practice this maneuver all the way down to the landing since it could damage the aircraft (and passengers).  

A mistake with deadly consequences in such a circumstance is to try to turn around and land on the same runway used for take-off; tight turns are required, which consume altitude and airspeed quickly, often leading to a low-level wing-stall and perhaps a spin; at low levels these are often unrecoverable with the available altitude and speed, and trying to get back to the runway has cost many lives.  This is why pilots are trained to look ahead for a safe place and try to land more or less straight ahead if the engine fails close to the ground, and above all control the aircraft and keep the airspeed high enough to keep the aircraft flying.