Flying again: P.E.I.'s flight school gets a new plane to replace one destroyed

P.E.I.'s only flight school is back in operation after its only plane was totaled during an emergency landing on Mother's Day.

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The Cessna 172 suffered extensive damage after the plane's engine quit at 2,000 feet, forcing pilot Paul Tymstra to land the aircraft in a farmer's field in Hampton, P.E.I.

Tymstra was able to land the plane on its wheels, but as it rolled downhill the nose dug into the earth, causing one of the wings to catch and the plane to flip over. That caused extensive damage to the wings and fuselage.

"It was a total write-off," said Tymstra, owner of Sea Eagle Aviation, based out of the Charlottetown airport.

"The airplane was too bent up for them to fix it up within a reasonable amount of money."

Replacement plane

A couple of weeks later, Tymstra settled with the insurance company and went on a search for a replacement.

It took two months but he finally settled on another Cessna 172, one year older than the previous plane but with fewer flying hours.

"My very first flight after the incident was in this airplane, I took it for a test flight," said Tymtra.

"The owner at that time took it over here to Charlottetown and I went up in it and I was nervous, I have to say."

Tymstra was able to shake off the nerves and focus on the plane.

"Once we leveled off,I went, okay this is fun again. I love being able to do this."

Student standby

The emergency landing happened just three weeks after Tymstrahad officially launched his re-branded flight school and sightseeing company.

"We just got off the ground and the business was running, now what do we do?" he said.

"I thought I have to keep going with this, this is really unusual that something like this would happen in the first place."

With no other flight school on P.E.I., most of his students chose to wait for Tymstra to get a replacement aircraft.

"People were trying to get their recreational or private or commercial licences and along with sightseeing, it's difficult because you can't offer a service even though you want to," he said.

"You have to lay that aside and say, let's move forward, let's buy an airplane, let's keep teaching and we will be there but it may not be right away."

'It's good now'

As for the engine failure, an aircraft mechanic took the engine apart, but came up with no definitive answer.

• Transportation Safety Board investigating cause of small plane crash on P.E.I.

"There's a couple of different things, if you lose fuel, that's a problem, if you lose the spark, that's a problem," said Tymstra.

"To say it was one thing or another, without spending tens of thousands of dollars, we're not 100 per cent," said Tymstra.

"We have an idea but we're not 100 per cent to say this is what was wrong with the engine."

"At the end of it, there wasn't human error so we'll leave it at that," he said.

"I took care of them, got them to the ground and we're all good and walked away."

"So it's good. It's good now."

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