The group that monitors Canadian air safety and investigates accidents says its statistics show aviation in the North is getting safer over time.
Transportation Safety Board of Canada western regional manager Jon Lee said serious injuries and fatalities in the territories had “basically halved” over the quarter of a century he has served as an investigator.
Lee was speaking at the Northern Air Transport Association’s annual conference, which is being held in Yellowknife this year.
The numbers fluctuate from year to year. There were no injuries or deaths among commercially operated flights from 2014 to 2017, while more recently there were eight fatalities in 2024 and two in 2025.
Overall, Lee said, the data is “trending in a positive direction.” Mandatory reportable occurrences in the NWT, for example, have dropped from an average of 25 a year at the start of the century to about 15 now (there were 19 last year).
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During the course of his presentation, Lee touched on the progress of investigations that remain active related to the NWT.
The final report into January 2024’s Fort Smith plane crash, which killed six people, was published last month.
A report into the summer 2024 helicopter crash in Fort Good Hope that killed pilot Tom Frith has reached draft status and will shortly head for confidential review among the parties involved before it is published.
That incident is already known to have involved the failure of a critical part.
A summer 2025 helicopter crash outside Behchokǫ̀ that killed pilot Joshua Patenaude is still being investigated. Lee said the investigation into that helicopter’s in-flight failure is “complex” and work is ongoing to establish the precise order in which some events occurred.
