Flight instructor killed in crash remembered for professionalism

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/01/2012 (5274 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Fari Abasabady taught the next generation of pilots how to fly safely in the skies of Manitoba.

Sadly, Abasabady was the pilot at the controls of the doomed Keystone Air Service Piper Navajo PA 31-350 when it fell from the sky and slammed into the frozen North Spirit Lake in Ontario on Tuesday, killing four people including himself.

No one knows what caused the two-engine plane to crash about half a kilometre shy of the gravel airstrip at the remote aboriginal reserve about 400 kilometres north of Kenora during a blizzard. Federal air-crash investigators are still at the scene sifting through the shattered and burned wreckage, but people who knew the 41-year-old Abasabady in the aviation world are in shock.

“He was a safe pilot,” Dan Reeves, president and chief pilot of Winnipeg Aviation, said on Thursday.

“It’s most regrettable what happened… it’s always a shock. The aviation community is a close-knit family.”

Besides Abasabady, other victims in the crash were Aboriginal Strategies president Ben Van Hoek, 62, of Carman, the company’s accountant 39-year-old Colette Eisinger, of Winnipeg, and Martha Campbell, 38, of Winnipeg.

Brian Shead, also an employee of Aboriginal Strategies, was the sole survivor of the crash. He is recovering from his injuries at Health Sciences Centre.

Investigators with the Transportation Safety Board of Canada arrived at the reserve on Wednesday and the OPP North West Region and the Nishnawbe-Aski Police Service are assisting.

Reeves said Abasabady “was a real friendly guy” who he knew very well. He also knew the man’s wife from the dinners he had with the couple. He said they had no children.

“As a flight instructor, personality is as important as flight skill,” he said.

“He was well-liked and had a good sense of humour.”

Reeves said all of his flight-training school students have safety drummed into them. “Our students are taught safety first and foremost,” he said. “We make sure our instructors instil that in them.”

Reeves said Abasabady learned to fly in Ottawa and also took flight training at a school in Gimli that no longer exists.

“He came to us and he trained to be a flight instructor. He passed and then he was here for 21/2 years.”

Reeves said Abasabady left Winnipeg Aviation in the spring to do some advance flight training before joining Keystone.

“It was the next stepping stone in his career.”

Simon Garrett, operations manager and chief flying instructor at the Rockcliffe Flying Club in Ottawa, said Abasabady worked as a part-time dispatcher with the club several years ago.

Garrett, who said he didn’t know Abasabady, said the pilot trained at the Ottawa Flying Club before he and his wife moved to the Caribbean after she got a job there.

Earlier this week, George Riopka, a spokesman for Keystone, confirmed the airline hired Abasabady this summer and he had logged about 150 hours of flying on the Piper Navajo.

Riopka said Abasabady had about 2,400 hours of pilot experience in total.

“He was very friendly and a nice person to be around — everyone says that,” he said.

Abasabady is survived by his wife, Charlotte, who works at the University of Manitoba’s medical school.

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca