A final report from the Canadian Forces ‘Airworthiness Investigative Authority’ has been released, and it suggest that distraction may have been the cause of a fatal plane crash near Cold Lake. Captain Thomas McQueen was killed November 28th, 2016 while flying a CF-18 and dropping practice bombs during an exercise near CFB Cold Lake.
A report has been released and says that it does not believe McQueen’s plane suffered a mechanical failure or a bird strike. It believes McQueen may have become too focused on the mock bombing and forgot to monitor his flight path. The exercise featured bombing runs at 200 metres, a standard which has since been raised to 300.
Captain McQueen was a 10-year Royal Canadian Air Force veteran originally from Hamilton. He was flying the lead CF-18 in the two-aircraft training mission.