{"id":177957,"date":"2026-08-22T04:03:28","date_gmt":"2026-08-22T04:03:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/177957\/"},"modified":"2026-08-22T04:03:28","modified_gmt":"2026-08-22T04:03:28","slug":"witnesses-recount-scene-after-plane-crash-on-prince-george-b-c-highway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/177957\/","title":{"rendered":"Witnesses recount scene after plane crash on Prince George, B.C., highway"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

An iPhone photo shows an aircraft on the side of Foothills Boulevard in Prince George, B.C., on Thursday.Kennedy Gordon\/Kennedy Gordon\/The Prince George Citizen<\/p>\n

There was no time for Jaime Pawliuk to take his foot off the gas as a plane smashed into the car ahead of him and then barrelled toward his \u2013 all he could do was wrench his wheel right to swerve into the nearby ditch. <\/p>\n

He says the sudden manoeuvre on a busy thoroughfare in Prince George, B.C., on Thursday afternoon created just enough space to avoid the plane\u2019s propellers from slicing through his vehicle and, likely, him, but the plane\u2019s wings still shaved part of the roof of his cab.<\/p>\n

One person in the car ahead of him died from the impact<\/a>, authorities confirmed. <\/p>\n

The twin-engine turboprop charter plane was en route to Prince George\u2019s airport when it lost power to one of its engines and made an emergency landing on Foothills Boulevard, a major arterial road in the northwest corner of the city, the Transportation Safety Board said. The plane hit four vehicles, injuring several people on the ground, though there were no injuries among the aircraft\u2019s pilot, crew member or six passengers. <\/p>\n

Mr. Pawliuk, a 42-year-old security guard, was driving up Foothills Boulevard to start a week-long shift about 160 kilometres north in Mackenzie when the plane crashed, \u201cappearing from nowhere,\u201d he said in an interview. <\/p>\n

The only sound he heard was the twist of metal and the shattering of sunroof glass. He walked away from the crash with only minor cuts from the flying shards. Processing the incident won\u2019t be easy or quick, Mr. Pawliuk said. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not something that\u2019s supposed to happen. It\u2019s not really something that you should make sense out of,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just an absolute accident that happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

The wings of the plane damaged the roof of Jaime Pawliuk\u2019s car.Supplied<\/p>\n

The Transportation Safety Board, which is on scene investigating what led to the crash, said the flight originated from the Sturdee gravel airstrip. The remote facility is about 650 kilometres northwest of Prince George and serves nearby mining operations. <\/p>\n

Toronto-headquartered Evergold Corp. confirmed on Friday that two of its staff were on board alongside employees of other mining companies working at various sites in the north of the province. The two Evergold employees were being transported south for a scheduled break from work on the company\u2019s northern B.C. mining project. <\/p>\n

BC Emergency Health Services sent two ambulances to the crash scene shortly after the emergency landing around 2 p.m., paramedic public information officer Brian Twaites said in an e-mail. It treated 10 patients, including two people who were transported to hospital in stable condition. <\/p>\n

TSB spokesperson Nic Defalco said in an e-mail that the Beechcraft King Air 200 airplane left the Sturdee airstrip at roughly 1:25 p.m. before it lost power to one of its engines.<\/p>\n

Mike Morris, a former MLA and long-time Mountie in the area, raced to the scene of the crash from his home a couple minutes away and saw officers blocking off the road. The boulevard has two lanes for traffic going up the big hill where the plane landed and one coming down. <\/p>\n

Mr. Morris, a former RCMP commander in the north of the province who then served as solicitor-general under the previous B.C. Liberal government, said the pilot of the craft appears to have manoeuvred well through a difficult emergency. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere were eight souls on board that aircraft \u2013 all of them were able to get out of there,\u201d Mr. Morris said in an interview. \u201cHe did a very good job, it\u2019s just unfortunate we had a death and other injuries.\u201d <\/p>\n

The Prince George Airport was alerted to the incident and was preparing to receive the airplane for an emergency landing before it travelled toward Foothills Boulevard, the airport authority said in news release on Thursday. <\/p>\n

The plane has been registered to Sekani Air Ltd., a northern B.C. chartered airline, since October, 2025, according to Transport Canada records. <\/p>\n

Someone who picked up the phone at Sekani Air\u2019s Prince George headquarters on Friday morning said the company is not commenting on the incident. <\/p>\n

In 2024, a different airline owned the plane and called in a mayday outside of Kelowna\u2019s airport while conducting the medical evacuation of a patient from Phoenix. After the oxygen masks dropped down during the plane\u2019s descent, the pilot was able to land it safely during that night in January, 2024, according to Canadian aviation records.<\/p>\n

An inspection found a knob controlling the pressure had incorrectly been turned to the maximum level, but no defects were found in the plane, according to online records from Transport Canada\u2019s Civil Aviation Daily Occurrence Reporting System. Upper Valley Aviation Ltd., the Chilliwack, B.C. airline that owned the plane at the time, did not answer when called. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: An iPhone photo shows an aircraft on the side of Foothills Boulevard in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":177958,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[164,224,238,214,212,239,17,211,230,231,227,213,210,235,171,234,143,222,249,215,216,229,225,226,219,240,220,244,245,247,242,246,94,243,217,142,233,113,232,241,223,236,237,228,221,218,248],"class_list":["post-177957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-alberta","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}