Horse owner Brad Beznoska has had his fill of flying irritants that buzz around his farmyard, descend on his pastures and pester his horses.
No, the source of his angst isn’t mosquitoes or horseflies. It’s airplanes – sometimes as many as six a day – that fly at altitudes ranging from several hundred feet to as low as 10 feet off the ground.
“This started happening about six years ago,” said Beznoska, a former grain farmer and horse trainer who lives on his grandfather’s 105-year-old homestead near Delisle, Sask.
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“It started off slowly and it just seemed to progress. Every time I complained (to police or air traffic authorities) it would just get worse and worse and worse, to the point where they were diving down, just a few feet off the ground, right over my livestock.”
Beznoska said repeated calls to local police have yielded few results.
Officials from Transport Canada, which enforces aircraft regulations, told him they could do little to help unless he could provide proof of the bothersome flyovers.
Beznoska responded by taking pictures of the planes.
A photo album in his house contains more than 300 photographs of 16 aircraft – 13 with registration marks on the wings and three without.
A recent call to RCMP in Biggar, Sask., was cause for optimism, he said.
Officers from that detachment inspected Beznoska’s photo album, kept several photos as evidence and passed on an assurance from Transport Canada that action would be taken.
The closest airport to Beznoska’s farm is 50 kilometres away in Saskatoon.
Beznoska can’t prove it but he thinks pilots are intentionally targeting his farmyard.
Earlier this spring, he contacted the RCMP after an unidentified plane did a low level flyover through his yard.
The following day, four planes flew past, just metres above the trees in his windbreak.
“This is a very malice act,” he said.
“I believe this is a personal attack on me.”
The final straw occurred earlier this year, when one of his best mares came up lame.
Beznoska suspects the horse sustained its leg injury after being spooked by a plane.
Five months after the incident, the 18-year-old mare is still on the limp and looks unlikely to recover, he said.
“I don’t have proof, but I would have to think it was a plane that spooked her,” he said.
“I can’t say for sure. I don’t have a picture of it … and I’m not going to accuse anybody of something they didn’t do … but I’ve seen the planes go down low over the pasture and I’ve seen how the horses respond.”
Harvey Domoslai, a large animal veterinarian with Corman Park Vet Services near Saskatoon, said horses, elk and other high strung livestock species can be spooked by thunderstorms, gunshots, unfamiliar cattle and wildlife species such as cougars and moose.
“When an animal spooks, it’s usually pretty hard to pin it down to one thing, unless you’re actually there to see it,” Domoslai said.
“But there’s no doubt that a low-flying aircraft will do that.”
Livestock owners near Moose Jaw, Sask., can follow a formal complaint procedure if their animals are spooked by military aircraft that train in the area.
“You could actually go in and file a complaint if a pilot flew too close to your farm, your cows didn’t milk for a day or your chickens stopped laying,” Domoslai said.
“There was actually a formal claim procedure … that you could follow and they would compensate you (for lost production).”
Jim Stewart, regional manager of aviation enforcement with Transport Canada, said his office receives occasional complaints from farmers who encounter problems with low- flying aircraft.
The majority of those calls involve aerial applicators who are permitted to fly at low altitudes, he added. With some exceptions, civilian aircraft are required to fly at least 500 feet above rural residences, people, vehicles and buildings, Stewart said.
“If they’re flying just from point A to point B and … not over someone’s (residence) they can basically fly at any altitude they want. But as soon as they go over a person or their (buildings, vessels, vehicles or structures), they have to be no less than 500 feet.”
Stewart said low-flying aircraft sometimes originate from flight training schools that require pilots in training to practise forced landing techniques, which are low-level manoeuvres that simulate the approach to a landing strip.
When practising a forced landing, pilots must return to the minimum 500 foot elevation before they fly over a residence, Stewart said.
However, a pilot may not be contravening aviation rules if he performs the manoeuvre adjacent to a residence or building.
Beznoska has been told that flight training schools based in Saskatoon often use the area to train would-be pilots.
“If there is a flight training school in the area, it would be nice for him to know that,” Stewart said.
“We often ask anybody who has concerns with aircraft flying low to talk to the (flight school) operators. Quite often, it’s simply a matter of asking them to move their point of landing to another location.”
Flight schools are not required to register their training areas with Transport Canada nor do they require the department’s approval to conduct training exercises in a rural area.
Farmers who have problems with low-flying planes can register a complaint with Transport Canada’s aviation enforcement division at 800-463-0521.
The agency has the authority to investigate individual pilots suspected of breaking the law, but an investigation won’t be launched unless the complainant provides aircraft registration, dates and times of the alleged offence, and
visual evidence of the infraction, either in photos or video footage.
“There are rules and regulations which (allow us) to go after an individual pilot if they break those rules,” Stewart said.
“But one of the major issues that we always have is to determine whether that activity actually took place. In other words, we need evidence.”
