The Canadian Air Transportation Administration (CATA) directs the management of all operational, development and regulatory activities of Transport Canada in support of aeronautics and is responsible for maintaining and promoting all aspects of air safety. CATA is a decentralized operation; in addition to the office of the Air Administrator at Ottawa, there are regional administrators in Moncton, N.B.; Dorval, Quebec; Willowdale, Ontario; Winnipeg, Manitoba; Edmonton, Alberta; and Vancouver, British Columbia.
This accession consists of investigation reports for accidents involving aircraft within the geographical jurisdiction of the Edmonton Regional Office of the Canadian Air Transportation Administration. Files contain details of the circumstances of the accident, in some cases, photographs and a short investigation report explaining the cause. Note that accidents of all types were investigated at this time, so the accidents covered in each file may range from minor mechanical malfunctions resulting in no injuries and little damage, to major accidents involving the loss of many lives.
Because the finding aid for this collection of records lacks detailed information about each file, researchers will benefit from comparing this finding aid with the contents of other finding aids and records in this Series. For example, BAN accession 1997-00300-7 (MIKAN 135953) consists of index cards about accidents that occurred between 1948-1977. Each accident has two dedicated index cards, the first, listing contextual information, and the second, comprising a short written summary of the accident. The first card identifies the file number for each accident. Files that are relevant to this collection of western-region accidents will be identified with file numbers 5002-W... The 'W' indicates 'western region.' Take note though that the finding aid for this collection omits the W, however, the incremental number remains the same. So as an example, the 1971 accident with file number 5002-W1609 would be the equivalent in this regional collection as file number 5002-1609. It is important to remember the 'W' as the regional identifier, since each region would have had their own file 5002-1609, the only difference being the regional identifier - Q for Quebec, O for Ontario, C for Central (and Northern), A for Atlantic, and P for Pacific. Since Headquarters also kept a separate file for each regional occurrence, HQ finding aids in the Series that list occurrences by region should also be very helpful in providing additional contextual information.
Since 2010, archival records are held at the Regional Service Centre in Winnipeg.
