An experienced pilot has died after a small plane crashed west of Ottawa near the town of Calabogie Monday afternoon.
The plane’s owner, Lorenzo Girones, identified the Pilot as Capt Bob Reany of Port Elgin, Ont., who was very well-known in the flight community.
Reany was training Girones to fly the Socata TBM700 Aircraft.
“Wonderful man…he was an excellent pilot,” Girones, a Timmins, Ont. lawyer, told CTV Northern Ontario’s Kari Vierimaa.
“It’s just a tragedy beyond comprehension.”
The aircraft went down shortly after the noon hour in a wooded area between the towns of Calabogie and Griffith, about a two-hour drive west of Ottawa. CTV Ottawa reported that the plane was destroyed on impact.
Girones said he and Reany flew from Goderich, Ont. to Carp earlier Monday and Raeny decided to fly back and spend Thanksgiving with his family. Reany was supposed to return and pick up Girones for his last day of training Tuesday.
Girones said his instructor was an practiced pilot who had logged 26,000 hours of flight time.
The Socata was a “brand new” aircraft, he said, adding that he doesn’t understand what went wrong.
“He spiralled down from 27,000 feet.”
Officers with the OPP’s Renfrew detachment had to approach the crash site on ATVs. The force’s Emergency Response Team searched the wreckage with local officers, as well as officials from the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre.
Jacqueline Allan was with her daughter in the area when the plane went down.
Allan said she heard “a high-pitched whine, kind of like motocross vehicles.”
“It was waxing and waning and then we heard a loud bang,” Allan told CTV Ottawa. “But it was muted, and my daughter thought maybe it was a gunshot.”
Allan said she only learned that a plane had crashed when the owner of a local trailer park told her he had heard reports of a plane going down in the area.
Girones said he’s thankful that he wasn’t aboard the plane when the crash occurred, “but I’m sad that it was (Reany).”
“I’m very concerned about his family and about his wife, with whom he was married for 46 years,” Girones said.
“I’m just sad and my heart goes out to her and his family.”
While the Transportation Safety Board investigated Monday's fatal plane crash in Calabogie, west of Ottawa, the family of the pilot, 74-year-old Bob Reany of Port Elgin, dealt with their loss.
1310News spoke with Bob's older brother, Bill Reany.
Growing up, Bill and Bob were very close and got into airplanes at a young age.
"He was a solid sort of a fellow," Bill said. "He had a lot of experience in the type of airplane he was flying (Monday)."
Bill said he last saw his little brother on Sunday at their church choir, where Bob Reany was talking excitedly about his plans to lift off in the airplane of his student, a lawyer from Timmins.
"He was quite happy with what he was doing for the fellow. He was impressed the airplane, it had all the latest (technology) on it. It was equipped for navigation very much like you would equip a small airliner."
Based on the "sketchy" information currently made available to the Reany family, Bill said it must have been a mechanical failure that lead to the plane dropping from the sky.
"(Bob) had radioed in after he left Ottawa en-route to Wiarton," Bill told 1310BNews. "I think he was at 27, 000 feet and he indicated he had mechanical problems. In two minutes it was all over."
The investigation continues into the fatality of a veteran Ontario pilot who was killed when the plane he was flying plungedinto a wooded area on Monday near Calabogie, about a two hour drive west of downtown Ottawa.
Investigators told CTV Ottawa, Tuesday, it’s still too early to determine what might have caused the plane to drop from the sky. They will literally piece together the plane to find out.
Investigators with the Transportation Safety Board said the impact of Monday’s plane crash near Calabogie was so intense it uprooted a giant oak tree.
Ontario police said they were called to the area between Calabogie and Griffith around 12:15 p.m., needing ATVs to get to the scene about three minutes off a nearby trail.
A witness said a plane seemed to be doing aerobatics before she saw an explosion.
"We heard kind of a high-pitched whine, like a motocross vehicle . . . it was waning and waxing and we heard a loud bang," said Jacqueline Allan.
Others said they could feel the impact when it hit the ground, rushing to the scene to see it sitting "in a thousand pieces."
Lorenzo Girones, a lawyer in Timmins, said he and 74-year-old Bob Raeny flew from Goderich, Ont. to Carp earlier Monday.
Reany then left alone to have Thanksgiving dinner with his family in southwestern Ontario before something went wrong.
Ken Bogie of the Goderich airport said the plane was scheduled to land there around 1:30 p.m. and crashed about 20 minutes after takeoff from Carp.
CTV Ottawa's Stefan Keyes visited the Carp airport and said it was a six-seater, single-engine Socata.
It was bought Sept. 18 and registered two days later, making its way from Timmins to Goderich, Ont.
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