Indian student identified as victim in plane collision near Steinbach

One of two pilots killed in a mid-air collision near Steinbach on Tuesday is an international student from India.

“With profound sorrow, we mourn the tragic passing of Mr. Sreehari Sukesh, a young Indian student pilot,” the office of Kapidhwaja Pratap Singh, acting consul general of India in Toronto, wrote in a post on X one day after the tragedy.

The post indicated the office was in contact with the family as well as local police and Harv’s Air flight training school.

The Free Press has confirmed the identity of the second student pilot as Savanna Royes, but efforts to reach her family were unsuccessful.

Both were students at the flight training school, located in Steinbach about 50 kilometres southeast of Winnipeg.

The Indian consulate did not respond to requests for further comment.

Sukesh was a certified private pilot working on his commercial licence, while the woman was working toward her private licence, Harv’s Air president Adam Penner has said.

Manitoba RCMP received reports about a collision involving two aircraft in the Rural Municipality of Hanover at 8:45 a.m. Tuesday. The pilots were operating a two-seater Cessna 152 aircraft and four-seater Cessna 172 aircraft, RCMP Cpl. Melanie Roussel said.

Police have not released the ages or other details about the victims. Both were pronounced dead at the scene, a plot of farmland located south of the Steinbach South Airport.

Investigators from the Transportation Safety Board of Canada arrived at the site Tuesday.

“We are still in the process of gathering preliminary information,” board spokesperson Hugo Fontaine said in an email.

Penner, said the two trainees were practising takeoffs and landing circuits. Both pilots were approaching the air strip to land at the time of the collision, he said.

Both of the aircraft had transmitters to communicate with trainers on the ground, but neither plane was equipped with a flight recorder (also known as a black box), Penner said. The electronic devices can record sounds from the cockpit and a variety of flight data commonly used during crash investigations.

Without that data, the investigation will rely primarily on physical evidence and eyewitness accounts, unless radio communications were being recorded from the ground using a universal communications system, said aviation expert Jock Williams.

Information on the Harv’s Air website indicates the airstrip does have such a system, but its hours of operation are limited.

“It’s possible for you to be flying along minding your own business on either of those types (of aircraft) and somebody could either drop down on top of you… or climbing up underneath you.”–Jock Williams

“That’s the first thing that the investigators will be looking for,” said Williams, who spent about 35 years as a fighter pilot and 13 years as a flight safety inspector for Transport Canada.

He said the transmission will show whether the two pilots were advising each other about their position.

Williams was cautious not to speculate on the potential cause, but noted neither model of plane has overhead or lower windows, meaning a pilot’s sight lines are limited to what is ahead of them.

The typical training circuit involves taking flight, climbing to altitude and flying a large loop around an airstrip before descending for landing. There are often at least four checkpoints along the route in which a pilot is expected to broadcast their location to other aircraft, Williams said.

In the case of the Steinbach South Airport, which does not have an air traffic control tower, it is critical these lines of communication remain open between pilots, he said.

“It’s possible for you to be flying along minding your own business on either of those types (of aircraft) and somebody could either drop down on top of you… or climbing up underneath you,” Williams said.

“Basically, you can be unaware of some other airplane’s positioning.”

Investigators will look at the propeller marks on the fuselage or wings. These can indicate which plane made initial contact and where. In some cases, measuring the marks can help determine the speed a plane was travelling and whether the engine was operating properly, he said.

Williams stressed Transport Canada has a robust system to regulate safety standards at flight schools, including regular reviews of logbooks and audits of flight lessons.

“You can rest assured that Harv’s is being subjected to that kind of scrutiny,” he said.

Former student Mike Kostenko, who completed about 70 hours of in-air training at Harv’s Air around 2020, said the school was professional and safety-focused.

“I never had a close call, I never had anything there. Nothing. It was just absolutely uneventful… Everything was so thorough and the procedures were just so drilled into your head that it just shocked me the accident even happened,” Kostenko said.

“Everything was so thorough and the procedures were just so drilled into your head that it just shocked me the accident even happened.”–Mike Kostenko

The owner of another Manitoba flight school told the Free Press Harv’s Air is widely respected for its safety and training standards. The family-owned and -operated flying school has been in business for more than 50 years.

Bardia Salimkhani, president of the Steinbach Flying Club, said Canada is a popular destination for international students who want to learn to fly and Harv’s Air is among numerous reputable training centres across the country that have made a name for themselves overseas.

Salimkhani was an international student trained by Harv’s Air via the aviation program at Providence University College and Theological Seminary, in nearby Otterburne.

University president Kenton Anderson stood by the flight training school in a statement Wednesday.

“Providence has had a long and healthy relationship with Harv’s Air as a long-established operator. We are proud of the quality of students we’ve graduated and at this point will rely upon the qualified accident investigation personnel to determine a cause and their recommended courses of action, if any,” he said.

The safety board has received 29 reports of accidents and incidents involving Harv’s Air since 1990. No incident was considered serious enough to launch a full investigation, said spokesperson Fontaine.

The Free Press reviewed reports provided by the board and found only one case that involved a serious injury. That happened earlier this year, on Jan. 8, when an instructor was struck by a propeller while trying to start a plane by hand.

— With files from Maggie Macintosh and John Longhurst

tyler.searle@freepress.mb.ca