Planes like crashing near my house

It is past 2:00am and I am sitting here at my computer, drinking some hot cocoa. Sometimes you feel so jittery that you try to drink something that usually makes you even more jittery (like hot cocoa) in an attempt to make yourself less jittery. I don't know how the hell that works, but it's worth a try.

Why am I so jittery? Well, the thought of two planes crashing within two years within biking distance from my house seems like a good reason to be nervous, does it not?

Around 10:06pm tonight (I guess it'd be last night on July 9, since we're past 12:00am now), a small plane bound for Vancouver International Airport crashed here in Richmond, resulting in a huge fireball and at least one large explosion. (News story: [Vancouver Province].)

The crash site is about 15-20 minutes from my house, and less than 300 meters from the Summer Night Market, a large weekend attraction that would've been open to thousands of people had it been Friday or a weekend rather than a Thursday (as it's closed from Mondays to Thursdays).



By the looks of it, what happened was that the pilot of the small plane that crashed was following too closely behind a large Airbus plane, thus getting caught in the wake turbulence behind it. That caused the pilot to lose control of the plane, and the aircraft eventually hit the ground nose-first in an industrial zone in northern Richmond.

Above: the plane's last approximate position before disappearing from the flight tracking map; it likely hit the wake turbulence of the large Airbus on the left. (Courtesy: WebTrak for Vancouver International Airport.)

While that area is well known for being one of Vancouver International Airport's flight paths and while the cause of the crash appears to be an error by the pilot, this is certainly unnerving. Just two years ago, in the fall of 2007, Richmond was also hit by a plane crash. Unlike the one tonight, which hit an unoccupied industrial zone in the middle of the night, the one in 2007 hit a residential complex in downtown Richmond (just 10 minutes from my house) during rush hour, narrowly missing the popular Richmond Public Market. (News story: [CTV].)

From 2007's crash:



While both of these are completely different types of crashes (except for the fact that they both occurred here in Richmond and they both involved small planes), this still feels scary. Richmond is home to the airport, and most of the residents live on the west end of Richmond; surprise, surprise, the airport is also located on the west end of the city. It makes me wonder if we're all a bunch of dumbasses for setting up our city like this.

But then again, at least we're not Hong Kong yet (despite our huge Chinese population):



Let's just hope that in the future, flights landing and departing Vancouver International Airport get less exciting. "No news is good news," as they say.