Our Story

On August 13, 2012, a small private 4-seat plane operated by a commercially-licensed pilot and acquaintance of our 24 year-old daughter Lauren Sewell, crashed into a treed mountainside 20 minutes into a flight from Penticton, B.C. back to suburban Vancouver, B.C. Our precious daughter and her boyfriend Dallas Smith both sustained fatal head injuries, while the pilot and another passenger both survived. On November 27, 2013 the TSB released Aviation Investigation Report A12P0136 into our daughter’s accident, and the following day we conducted a Media Release to present our side of the story. Finally, on October 3, 2014, the BC Coroners Service released the long-awaited report into the death of our daughter. Each of these 3 documents can be read in detail by clicking on the highlighted links above. Short video news clips of the TSB and Media Releases can also be viewed by clicking on the links “Kelowna plane crash” and “Watch: TSB report”. In the 3 year period since this tragedy, I have carried out extensive research into the many factors that contributed to this accident, and have alarmingly discovered that most of them were easily preventable, had proper procedures been followed and had aviation regulations been improved by Transport Canada in accordance with findings and recommendations contained in numerous earlier TSB and Coroners’ reports into similar accidents.

On November 10, 2014 my wife and I travelled to Milton, Ontario to hopefully meet with federal Transport Minister Lisa Raitt in her constituency office. Parliament was on a week-long break, and we hoped to meet with her and present in person a binder of information that I had authored entitled PROPOSED RECOMMENDATIONS FOR CHANGES TO THE CANADIAN AVIATION REGULATIONS (CARs). Unfortunately Ms. Raitt was hospitalized at the time and unable to meet with us, however we did spend over an hour with her constituency assistant going over in detail the contents of my submission. We were assured that “this Department is all about safety”, and that my submission would be forwarded to policy and stakeholder officials within the ministry and Transport Canada for consideration, and that we should receive a written response within a few months. Despite repeated voicemails and conversations with employees of both the Minister’s Milton and Ottawa offices, we have just, in the past few days, finally received a written response from the Minister of Transport, 9 months after our initial submission. However it fails to address the 7 reform recommendations we have proposed, but acknowledges that “the safety of all Canadians is Transport Canada’s top priority”! A full copy of the Minister’s letter can be found in our News & Research section of this website. Because we feel that our reform proposals are being ignored, we have decided to launch this website today, August 13th, to coincide with the 3rd anniversary of the plane crash that claimed the lives of our daughter and her boyfriend. It is our sincere hope that, with the help of readers like you, much-needed reform to these antiquated laws can be achieved. We urge you to read more of the information contained within our website and the related links by using the Navigation button located in the upper right-hand corner or within the Navigation header above of our Home page, and to support our worthy cause.