Canada’s Transportation Safety Board (TSB) yesterday released the
final report on the landing accident of a Bombardier Global 5000 in Fox Harbour, Nova Scotia, on Nov. 11, 2007. Ten people were injured after the Global
touched down seven feet six inches short of the 4,885-foot runway. The jet was operated by charter operator Jetport, but the accident flight was not a charter. According to the TSB, the Global descended below and remained below the abbreviated precision approach path indicator (Apapi) on-slope indication 0.5 nm from the runway threshold. In its analysis, the TSB found that Jetport’s management structure exhibited “several indicators that adequate resources were not in place.” Jetport held a private operator certificate issued by the Canadian Business Aviation Association (CBAA) under delegation by Transport Canada. “At the time of the Fox Harbour accident,” the TSB report noted, “the CBAA did not participate in, or observe, audits of its POC holders and did not have a quality-assurance program in place. This allowed deficiencies in Jetport’s [safety management system] to go unnoticed.” Although the CBAA has “amended its manuals to include a quality-assurance framework for its POC program,” the TSB reported, the agency recommended that the CBAA “set safety management system implementation milestones for its certificate holders” and “implement an effective quality-assurance program for auditing certificate holders.”