Nunavut plane-jumper flew with girl who filed sexual assault complaint against him

The door of this Adlair Air Ltd. King Air 200, shown here in a photo dating from April 15, 2009, was damaged during a medical charter flight from Yellowknife, Northwest Territories to Cambridge Bay, Nunavut on that same day when passenger Julian Tologanak-Labrie jumped out of the aircraft, 180 km southwest of Cambridge Bay.

CAMBRIDGE BAY—The only other passenger on the the ill-fated Adlair flight that Julian Tologanak-Labrie took from Yellowknife to Cambridge Bay on April 15, 2009 was a young woman who had filed a sexual assault complaint against him in 2007.

The woman, a patient returning from Yellowknife to Cambridge Bay, had made a complaint of sexual assault against Tologanak-Labrie dating from May 2007, which had been dropped after a preliminary inquiry, RCMP Sgt. Charlie Gauthier told an inquest in Cambridge Bay on Wednesday, April 14.

Tologanak-Labrie would have been sitting about six to 10 feet away from the woman at the Shell terminal used by Adlair in Yellowknife, Paul Laserich, the manager of Adlair Aviation told the inquest.

Tologanak-Labrie was on the flight as a favour to his mother, Navalik Helen Tologanak, although Laserich told the inquest that “if we knew the facts,” he wouldn’t have authorized the young man’s presence on the flight.

But no one at Adlair Aviation Ltd. had any concerns about the mental state of Tologanak-Labrie before he boarded the King Air 200 in Yellowknife at about 4:38 p.m. that day Paul Laserich, the airline’s general manager told the inquest on April 14.

Laserich said the 20-year old seemed quiet, but otherwise normal, as he waited for the charter flight from Yellowknife. Laserich had spoken to the social worker who said he was “good to go.”

Now, on every medical charter flight operated by Adlair Air Ltd., which carries passengers to or from Yellowknife, there’s a nurse, who has with medical information about the patient on board.

Immediately after Tologanak-Labrie’s jump, Adlair’s owners and manager, Paul and René Laserich, spelled out a policy on April 20, 2009 letter saying all future medical travel flights would be solely for patients and their escorts.

But this policy wasn’t the case five days earlier, when Tologanak-Labrie opened the door of Adlair’s King Air 200 at 7,000 metres en route from Yellowknife to Cambridge Bay and jumped to his death.

Laserich said he went ahead and crafted the policy without any input from the governments of Nunavut or the Northwest Territories, because official decisions can take time.

Medical travel of Nunavut patients to the NWT accounts for about 70 per cent of airline’s business, which operates two King Air 200s, a Twin Otter and a Lear Jet in the Kitikmeot region of Nunavut.

As a result of Tologanak-Labrie’s leap, all passengers on medical travel flights must also possess warrants from the Nunavut health department, he said.

“Unfortunately the North has changed, the rule is always that you help people out. We don’t do that anymore. We don’t give anyone a free ride anymore, only our flight crew,” he said.

However, Adlair continues to carry cargo, such as bodies, a cross for cemetery marker or birdseed as a service to local residents, Laserich said.

“We like to do that stuff. That’s what the North is all about still,” he said.

April 15, 2009 marked the first time in the 30-year history of his family’s small, family-owned airline that a passenger had been unruly, he said.

A commercial pilot, Laserich said he was not aware of Transport Canada policies regarding passengers who create a disturbance.

Craig George, who was one of two pilots on the disastrous flight, broke down in tears during his April 14 testimony as he described his initial shock when he saw Tologanak-Labrie attempting to open the bolted door about an hour and a half into the two-hour, 763 kilometre flight.

George then recounted his unsuccessful efforts and maneuvers to knock Tologanak-Labrie off his feet and keep him from unlocking the plane’s doors.

These included first asking Tologanak-Labrie to sit down— which he did for a short while, even fastening his seatbelt — to rolling the aircraft and then releasing the pressure to force everyone on board to use oxygen to breathe.