YLW stunt: who owns plane

Photo: Alanna Kelly

A search on the tail letters of a private jet that performed a dangerous stunt at Kelowna International Airport last week shows it is owned by a leasing and fractional ownership group out of Oklahoma City.

The twin-engine Cessna 560xl Citation performed a burnout-type manoeuvre on the tarmac at YLW to burn off excess fuel on March 5.

Airport firefighters responded after the pilot revved up his engines and held firm on the brakes to burn off fuel after a miscalculation resulted in the aircraft being over-fuelled. Such an error can result in a plane being dangerously overweight.

However, the taxiway stunt caused the brakes to overheat, catch fire, bursting the aircraft's tires and damaging the landing gear.

The 2002 Citation, tail letters N629QS, is registered to Netjets Sales Inc. of Oklahoma.

According to data from FlightAware.com, the aircraft flew into Kelowna March 5, from San Jose, Calif. It touched down at 9:27 a.m.

The 13-seat aircraft received its airworthiness registration on Dec. 6, 2002, and was last certified on Aug. 10, 2017.

It performed 475 flights last year, and 50 or more each year since 2002.

Netjets is a U.S.-based international company that offers shared aircraft ownership, leasing, private luxury flight service and aircraft management. It was founded in 1984.

Seven passengers had to be evacuated off the aircraft at YLW, which is estimated to have incurred damages as high as $300,000.

The Transportation Safety Board was looking into the incident.

YLW manager Sam Sammadar called it a rare occurrence.

"We do have incidents like this one from time to time – but we do have a safety management system, and it's robust. We always investigate the cause of these kinds of incidents and look at how they can be mitigated in the future," he said.