OTTAWA—The pilot at the controls of a light jet that crashed with former Alberta premier Jim Prentice onboard lacked the required proficiency in night flying and likely became disoriented soon after take-off, investigators said Thursday.

However, because the Cessna Citation jet was not equipped with flight recorders nor was it required to be, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada said the true cause of the crash that killed Prentice and three others will never be known for sure.

“We have no detailed sequence of what went on in the flightdeck. All we have is a hypothesis, a scenario that doesn’t have enough facts to be definitive . . . That simply isn’t good enough,” Kathy Fox, chair of the safety board, told a news conference Thursday.

In a final report into the crash released Thursday, the board urged the mandatory installation of lightweight flight recorders on commercial and private business aircraft not currently required to carry them.

Such devices record key flight information, cockpit conversations and communications with air traffic control, providing investigations with a wealth of data in the event of an accident. But in Canada, only multi-engine, turbine-powered commercial aircraft flown by two pilots and carrying six or more passengers must be equipped with such recorders. But now that the recorders are cheaper and smaller, the board says they should be installed on more aircraft.

The board also called on Transport Canada to step up oversight of the business aviation sector. The safety board found no record that the operator of accident aircraft had ever been inspected. As a result, the regulator was in the dark about safety deficiencies in its flight operations.

The death of Prentice, a high-profile cabinet minister in Stephen Harper’s Conservative government and then Alberta premier, sent shock waves through Canada’s political scene.

As a high-profile cabinet minister in Stephen Harper’s Conservative government and then Alberta premier, Prentice’s death sent shock waves through Canada’s political scene.

Prentice and the others were travelling home to Calgary on Oct. 13, 2016 after a day of golf in Kelowna. The jet departed Kelowna at 9:32 p.m. but quickly disappared off the radar with no emergency calls or indications of a problem. Searchers discovered the crash scene hours later about 11 kilometres north of the airport. The aircraft had been destroyed by the impact.

Investigators believe that the pilot, dealing with a high workload flying the aircraft alone, experienced spatial disorientation soon after takeoff. Its climb rate was erratic and the jet wandered off course, before entering a steep descending turn to the ground.

“These sensations can be intense, causing pilots to doubt their instruments, to incorrectly adjust controls or even put the aircraft into an accidental spiral dive,” said Beverley Harvey, the lead investigator into the crash.

The report noted that the pilot did not have the recent night flying experience required by Transport Canada for carrying passengers at night, putting him at greater risk of a loss of control accident.

However, the board cautioned that it’s only a working theory because it lacked the data that flight recorders would have provided. “We cannot know for certain what happened that night,” Harvey said.

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