Career Options
Keeping our airways safeFor most of us, plane crashes are an unfortunate fact of life but not something we dwell on. |
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 [ 2008-02-13 ] |
Peter Rowntree's substantial contributions to airline safety in Canada were recognized on Feb. 11, when he received a 2007 Premier's Award for outstanding college graduates in the Technology category.
For Peter Rowntree, many plane crashes stay top of mind long after the stories about them in the paper have been used for birdcage liner.
As a senior air investigator with the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, Rowntree investigates accidents where a gap in aviation safety may be at play.
"We're trying to find out what happened and see if we can prevent it from ever happening again," says Rowntree, 42.
60 AIR INCIDENTS
In his 10 years at the board, Rowntree has been called to the scene of about 60 different air incidents, which have included small helicopter and private plane mishaps to smash-ups of 747s carrying hundreds of passengers. His job is to search through the wreckage, try to piece to together what went wrong and identify if any safety issues contributed to the crash.
"This is the one industry where business is good when there's no business," says the Barrie resident.
A lifelong interest in aviation inspired by his grandfather -- a tail gunner who flew with the Royal Canadian Air Force during WWII -- propelled Rowntree in 1985 to enrol in Canadore College's two-year Aviation Technician-Aircraft Maintenance program.
Taught out of the school's North Bay campus, the program trains students on the various key skills of aircraft mechanics, including how an aircraft is built and works; troubleshooting aircraft components; and searching for and repairing small problems to ensure planes are safe to fly. The program also prepares participants to write the Transport Canada Aircraft Maintenance Engineer (AME) exams to qualify for an AME licence.
"Anything you can think of that you'd need to know to repair aircraft was taught in two years, with a driving emphasis on safety," he says. "The curriculum was very thorough and taught in a very hands-on way."
Rowntree appreciated both the practical backgrounds of his teachers -- who all had years of industry knowledge and experience -- and the practical course activities that enabled him to apply what he'd learned.
"Canadore had a fleet of aircraft that we maintained and had aircraft wreckages that had been donated to the school that we could take apart and put back together. It helped me learn a lot about the structure of airplanes," he says.
That practical training helped him land an apprenticeship and, later, an AME position at First Air (Bradley Air Services), Canada's largest arctic airline, where he worked for 10 years.
Less than a year into his current job, Rowntree became involved in one of the most complex investigations in Canadian aviation history. On Sept. 2, 1998, when Swissair 111 crashed a few kilometers off the coast of Peggy's Cove, N.S., killing all 299 people on board, Rowntree -- along with hundreds of other investigators from Canada, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, France and the RCMP -- was there on the job for about two years. He took part in the slow, painstaking process of retrieving countless tiny pieces of shattered aircraft and seemingly endless human remains from the bottom of the ocean to try to piece together what happened.
'DAUNTING TASK'
"The destruction of the aircraft was probably more than you can imagine. It crumbled as it was going into the water and broke into a million pieces. And even 12 months in, we were still bringing up human remains -- I've seen horrors that I wouldn't want anyone to have in their head," Rowntree says. "Trying to sift through all the wreckage and figure out what happened was a daunting task."
With their expertise and persistence, Rowntree and his co-workers achieved their goal, establishing the cause of the incident and contributing to 23 safety recommendations put forth by the board.
Rowntree's substantial contributions to airline safety in Canada were recognized on Feb. 11, when he received a 2007 Premier's Award for outstanding college graduates in the Technology category. He says his Canadore College training instilled in him a safety mindset, which he says is key to how he does his job.
"They really emphasize the importance of safety -- they drill it into your head that you need to do due diligence on the job, and if you don't, you are going to kill someone," he says. "I wouldn't be here doing what I do without that training."
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