Some passengers who were on a flight that crash landed at Gander International Airport last month are heading to court.

The Air Canada Express Flight AC7804, being operated by Exploits Valley Air Services (EVAS), crash landed during an April snowstorm, breaking off its front landing gear.

Frank Sheppard, one of the passengers on board the flight, says life has been “strange” since the crash.

“Went to bed [last night] and around 1 o’clock I jumped right out of bed and said geez I didn’t crash again, did I?” he told CBC’s Central Morning Show.

“It’s on the mind.”

Sheppard was one of 14 passengers and two crew members who were on the Beechcraft 1900 from Happy Valley-Goose Bay that hit the runway hard in Gander April 19 around 9:30 p.m.

While no one was seriously injured in the crash, three passengers were taken to hospital for observation.

Sheppard said he wasn’t seriously physically hurt, but he thinks the crash has caused some other problems.

“Not injured I suppose, but I had soft tissue injuries and that … I can’t sleep. I sleep for an hour or so and then I get up and wander around and watch TV and stuff like that,” he said.

“I can’t get a good night’s sleep. That’s new.”

The crash is something he thinks about every day. Sheppard travels to work in Labrador City, and said he’s not sure what it will be like Wednesday when he has to get on his first flight since the crash landing.

“I got to fly again, but I don’t know how I’m going to do it,” he said.

Questioning ‘very poor’ response

Passengers on board the Air Canada Express flight AC7804 say they had to stand on the tarmac in blizzard conditions for 20 minutes before an emergency response team arrived. (Submitted by Kris Ralph)

Sheppard said it isn’t just the stress following the crash that has him worried.

The crew and passengers said they had to wait 20 minutes on the tarmac in blizzard conditions before any response from the airport arrived — a response Sheppard said “was very poor.”

“For a crew and the passengers to wait for 20 minutes or more on the tarmac in them conditions, it should never have happened,” said Sheppard.

“They should have been there before that. And of course when they came to the scene of the incident, there was no ambulance came at all.”

For its part, the Gander International Airport Authority said while the response time could have been faster, it was “as good as it can get,” adding the poor weather conditions were a factor.

Sheppard is just one of the group of passengers who have now taken legal action, hiring St. John’s-based lawyer Bob Buckingham to launch a class-action lawsuit this week.

Buckingham said the case has taken over his practice, as they prepare to move forward.

“We’ll be naming Air Canada, we’ll be naming EVAS, we’ll be naming Nav Canada, we’ll be naming the airport and we would name the pilot and the co-pilot as employees of EVAS. That’s essentially who we’ll be going after,” said Buckingham.

An official with Air Canada told CBC that it “would be inappropriate to comment as this matter before the courts.” 

EVAS referred questions on the crash to Air Canada. 

Looking at long term

Laywer Bob Buckingham will be filing a class-action lawsuit this week, on behalf of a group of passengers on board Flight AC7804, which crash-landed in Gander April 19. (CBC)

According to Buckingham, Air Canada has already paid each of the passengers a gratuitous payment of $5,000 each, but added “they’re not admitting liability.”

He added the crash could have indeed been worse, but the passengers on board are entitled to answers.

“Luckily in this case there was no one killed … but each and every one of the people who I’ve spoken to have had a tremendous traumatic experience and we’ll be claiming for that, and we’ll be looking at what their long-term circumstances from the situation are going to be.”

Buckingham added he’s hopeful the Transportation Safety Board investigation into the crash will hopefully shed some light on the decisions that were made.

“Hopefully it will be addressed by the [TSB], what happened here in terms of one, the decision to land, and secondly, the tremendous amount of time, the inordinate amount of time, that it took the emergency rescue units to get there. It’s inexcusable from my analysis of the situation.”

Meanwhile, another passenger, who was seriously concussed in the crash, has engaged his own lawyer and is also suing the airline.