Spanish pilot missing after small plane crossing Atlantic crashes off Newfoundland

Winnipeg Free Press

01-05-2025

ST. JOHN'S – The search for a pilot whose small aircraft crashed in the Atlantic Ocean off the east coast of Newfoundland continued for a second day on Wednesday.
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada says the single-engine Air Tractor AT-802 took off from St. John's International Airport with only the pilot aboard on Tuesday morning.
A spokesman for the Joint Rescue Co-ordination Centre in Halifax says the centre received a signal from an emergency beacon around 9 a.m. Atlantic time.
Lt.-Cmdr. Len Hickey says the signal came from an area 225 kilometres east of St. John's.
He says two Canadian Coast Guard vessels and two fishing boats were dispatched to the scene to begin the search, and they were joined by a military CH-149 Cormorant search-and-rescue helicopter and a CC-130 Hercules fixed-wing aircraft.
The searchers later found an oil slick, one of the amphibious plane's floats, as well as an empty orange life-raft and some other debris.
Hickey said the transportation board confirmed the turboprop had been purchased in the United States by a man from Spain, whose flight plan included a stopover in St. John's before heading to the Azores, an island chain west of Portugal.
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The highly agile Air Tractor aircraft, which has a range of almost 1,000 kilometres, is primarily used for spraying agricultural crops. But it can also be used for aerial firefighting when equipped with floats.
Typically, smaller aircraft do not have the range to complete a transatlantic flight, but they can be equipped with auxiliary fuel tanks to extend their flight time.
'He was working his way up the eastern seaboard with the last touch point in North America being St. John's before he crossed the Atlantic,' Hickey said in an interview. 'The Azores was listed in the flight plan as the destination.'
Hickey said Wednesday the two fishing boats were released from the search later in the day, and he confirmed the search would continue until sundown. At that point if the pilot had not been found, the RCMP was expected to take on the case as a missing person file.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 30, 2025.