Wapiti Flight 402

Flight 402, Piper Navajo Chieftain before crash	The Four Survivors - (L to R: Erik Vogel, Scott Deschamps, Paul Archambault, Larry Shaben)	Wreckage of Flight 402
	Map of relative Alberta, Canada Airports with High Prairie highlighted in green

Narrative: Commuter plane crashed on approach to High Prairie (Alberta) airport

The aircraft was on a night IFR flight from Edmonton to Peace River, Alberta with a planned stop at Hight Prairie. While cruising above cloud at 8500 feet, the aircraft was cleared to descend to 7000 feet, and the pilot commenced an en route descent towards the High Prairie Airport. The descent was continued in cloud to below the minimum obstruction clearance altitude. While still in cloud at 2850 feet asl, the aircraft struck high terrain 20 miles east southeast of High Prairie. Six passengers perished; the pilot and three other passengers survived.

Flight Information:

Suggested Aircraft:

Piper Navajo Chieftain or similar with at least one ADF radio.

Weather:

Nighttime with light snow - 800 ft scattered, ceiling 1,500 ft broken, 8000 ft overcast.

Flight Plan:

When planning your flight you can choose your own navigational options. If you wish to follow the challenging flight of the actual aircraft, disable our hide your gps and perhaps don't even add a flight plan to the simulator. If not adding flight plan, you will have to manually enter the flight plan information into SPAACARs so that your flight hours can be logged.

The pilot actually had only one working ADF. His flight plan was from Edmonton Municipal Airport, no longer exists, so we'll start at Edmonton Intl, which is close to the old airport location. From there he tuned in Whitecourt VOR and followed that until he picked up High Prairie NDB and begun following that. He then monitored the Swan Hill NDB until he passed Swan Hill where he began his descent into High Prairie. Since this resulted in his crash because of high terrain beyond Swan Hill, you may want to maintain a safe altitude until you reach High Prairie NDB, then do a circling approach to the airport.

If you're flying MSFS2020, you can download the scenery file from the link above that I created to replace the High Prairie Airport NDB that is no longer there.

It's probably best that you look at your own flight planning documents to get a better layout of the airports, but most are on a direct flight route from Edmonton to Peace River, except for Whitecourt, which will take you west of the direct flight path. I found that the most direct flight is to fly on a 305 degree heading from Edmonton until I can pick up the Swan Hill NDB. Follow Swan Hill NDB until you can pick up High Praire NDB. Make your circling approach to land at High Prairie. Then you can take off and fly the final leg to Peace River where you can use an ILS approach.

Here's a summary of the navigation aids for this flight:

Edmonton VOR 114.1
Whitecourt VOR 112.5
Swan Hill NDB 251
High Prairie NDB 406
Peace River VOR 117.2

For those of you flying simulator other than MSFS2020, you can tune in the Swan Hill NDB and the Peace River VOR. High Prairie airport is along a line between Swan Hill and Peace River, approximately 60 miles DME from Peace River. You can always do a clear weather run to get the layout of things before trying it in the actual weather that existed when the crash occurred.

Remember to turn Off Econ Mode on SPAACARS before flying this flight or it will only record the flight from Edmonton to High Prairie and not the second leg to Peace River.

Flight Code	Origin	Destination	Distance(NM)	Orig Airport	Dest Airport	Rwy Lgth
903117	CYEG	CYPE	220	Edmonton Intl	Peace River	4970

Optional flights to airports serviced by Wapiti

Note: Take notice of the runway lengths, especially Grand Cache, which is a dirt strip, to ensure you have a plane capable of landing there.

Flight Code	Origin	Destination	Distance(NM)	Orig Airport	Dest Airport	Rwy Lgth
903118	CYEG	CYZH	126	Edmonton Intl	Slave Lake	5565
903119	CYZH	CZHP	58	Slave Lake	High Prairie	3896
903120	CZHP	CYPE	60	High Prairie	Peace River	4970
903121	CYPE	CEB5	34	Peace River	Fairview	3497
903122	CEB5	CYQU	56	Fairview	Grand Prairie	8482
903123	CYQU	CYGN	162	Grande Prairie	Grande Cache	1871
903124	CYGN	CEC4	103	Grande Cache	Hinton/Jasper-Hinton	4498
903125	CEC4	CYZU	86	Hinton/Jasper-Hinton	Whitecourt	5778
903126	CYZU	CYYC	192	Whitecourt	Calgary Intl	13993
903127	CYYC	CYEG	132	Calgary Intl	Edmonton Intl	10941