A 25-year study of Canadian seaplane accidents that occurred in water found that in 87 percent of cases, passengers and crew had less than a 15-second warning of trouble, giving them little time to prepare to escape or even to take a deep breath, according to a study by Canadian researchers.
A report on the study, published in the October issue of Aerospace Medicine and Human Performance, said seaplanes in this group accounted for 77 percent of the total 148 fatalities in seaplane water accidents occurring from 1995 through 2019.
The short warning time is “the first compelling reason a thorough preflight briefing should be made mandatory,” the report said.
Overall, 984 seaplane accidents were included in Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) records for the 25-year period, including 487 accidents that ended in the water. In addition to the 48…
