Buffalo Airways DC-3 forced landing.

[ACA856]

Avherald reports...Accident: Buffalo DC3 near Hay River on May 3rd 2019, forced landing after engine failure

A Buffalo Airways Douglas C-47A Skytrain (DC-3), registration C-GJKM performing flight J4-169 from Hay River,NT to Yellowknife,NT (Canada) with 2 crew, was enroute about 20 minutes into the 55 minutes flight when the right hand engine failed. The crew attempted to return to Hay River, however, had to perform a forced landing in open terrain around about 08:00L (14:00Z). The crew remained uninjured, the status of the aircraft is currently unknown (unverified preliminary information suggests the aircraft received damage beyond repair).

The Canadian TSB is looking into the occurrence to decide whether to deploy investigators on site.

The airline reported the cause was a mechanical fault, both crew are safe.

[capngrog]

First of all, it's great that nobody was injured in this crash. Under normal circumstances, the ol' Gooney Bird can fly quite well on one engine. There are only a couple of circumstances that come to what's left of my mind: they were over gross; the failed engine could not to feather ... or maybe a combination of both. If the cause of this crash was that the failed engine couldn't be feathered, the crew did a really good job of getting it on the ground without creating a smoking hole or rolling it up into a ball. I'm sure that there are other factors that may have come into play, and hopefully, we'll hear more details later.

Cheers,
Grog

[TSR2]

Wow, Buffalo seem to have far more than their fair share of mishaps.

[The Ancient Geek]

Hardly surprising given the aircraft they operate into some very difficult places.
Buffalo is not a "normal" airline, they are providing essential services which nobody else would even try.

[Halfnut]

Originally Posted by The Ancient Geek

Hardly surprising given the aircraft they operate into some very difficult places.
Buffalo is not a "normal" airline, they are providing essential services which nobody else would even try.

......and without Buffalo's business model those airports most likely would lose air service because anything else would be to expensive to serve the route or couldn't fit into the remote strip.

[India Four Two]

CBC News post:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north...down-1.5121833

[TSR2]

Yes they do provide an essential service. However these 'essential' services should be SAFE.

[Chiefttp]

I would think to provide safe services and fly 70 year old aircraft would be challenging at times. I’m a big fan of Buffalo and hope they continue to operate their business for many years.

[Smalahove]

Originally Posted by Halfnut

......and without Buffalo's business model those airports most likely would lose air service because anything else would be to expensive to serve the route or couldn't fit into the remote strip.

This is northern Canada. There are a lot of communities with no road access, but all of them have airports, and these airports are serviced regularly by many other carriers besides Buffalo. I didn't see any airports shutting down when Buffalo lost their license. Losing Buffalo would have no effect at all on northern airports.

[Dave Gittins]

I'm a great fan of the TV series and up to series 4 of the DVDs. In those Buffalo Joe always seems to fly the "sked" .. was that the case on this day ?

[TSR2]

Dave Gittins

Doubt it. Buffalo Joe had to relinquish day to day running of the airline as a condition of Buffalo getting their operators certificate back.

[evansb]

Yes indeed. It was back in December 24, 2015, that "Buffalo Joe" agreed to step away from running the day-to-day operations of the airline. He is basically retired.

FYI The show Ice Pilots ran from November 18, 2009 to December 17, 2014, comprising 6 seasons.

[TSR2]

Thanks for that evansb.