Incident: Arctic Sunwest DH8A at Yellowknife on Mar 4th 2009

Incident: Arctic Sunwest DH8A at Yellowknife on Mar 4th 2009, took ...
The Aviation Herald - Salzburg,Austria
An Arctic Sunwest Charter de Havilland Dash 8-100, registration C-GASB, was on the takeoff roll on runway 27 in light snowfall and a visibility of about 3-4 ...
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By Simon Hradecky, created Friday, Mar 6th 2009 21:10Z, last updated Friday, Mar 6th 2009 21:12Z

An Arctic Sunwest Charter de Havilland Dash 8-100, registration C-GASB, was on the takeoff roll on runway 27 in light snowfall and a visibility of about 3-4 miles, when the crew noticed a snow sweeper on the runway as the airplane just accelerated through 80 knots. The crew deemed it safer to continue the takeoff and climb over the snowplough than to reject takeoff. The airplane passed the sweeper at a height of about 50-100 feet.

The sweeper had been told to hold short of runway 09/27 and read back the instruction correctly, but did not comply with the instruction and entered the runway at a constant speed, monitoring the performance of the sweeper carefully as the sweeper had been shutting down intermittently. The driver was listening to the ground frequency, the airplane was on the mandatory frequency (MF).

The Canadian TSB reported, that the incident took place in twilight about 15 minutes before the tower was manned. Data gathered from this investigation may be used in the investigation of a similiar event as well, The Aviation Herald reported: Incident: Sunwest B190 at Ft. McMurray on Feb 9th 2009, takeoff over snowplough.