Survivors of paramotor airplane crash 21 years ago seek rescuers to say thank you

Twenty-one years ago, Amanda Marie Trigg (Wilson) and her grandfather Bill Francis Wilson

were doing one of their favourite pastimes, gliding a few hundred feet above farmland near

Cottonwood in his 1997 Harmening Highflyer powered parachute plane. Starting when she was

seven, Trigg said she probably went on one hundred flights with her grandfather, and on

October 3, 2003, a then 10-year-old Amanda was out for a joyride with him just like she had done

countless times before.

But this day would not end like the others, with a mildly bumpy landing in a field. This day saw

Trigg and her grandfather fall out of the sky. Thankfully, and by Trigg’s own account,

miraculously, they both survived. This story, however, revolves around two still unknown angels. 

“My grandpa loves thrills. He loves skydiving and will still go today if asked. He saw this plane

as the next adventure for him. It seemed like such a calm sport. He loved flying and bringing

people up in his plane, so the fact that his grandkids weren’t scared to go up, he was thrilled

about that,” explained Trigg.

“Everything went by slowly, and you got to see so much. We flew through low-hanging clouds,

and, as a kid, I thought it would be cool to catch some in a jar, so I remember one time I brought

a jar up with me to see if I could catch a cloud,” she chucked.

On October 3, 2003, Trigg was staying at her grandparent’s home for a weekend visit and went

up for a flight. “It was nearly evening because I remember the sky being painted so beautifully

with purple, orange and yellow.” Through their 2-way radio, her grandpa said they would be

turning around and heading home. “All of a sudden, the plane’s center bolt snapped. It’s one

bolt that keeps you straight. Once that snapped, we turned ninety degrees and faced the

ground.”

Trigg said it felt like slow motion. “We were calm as ever. It’s still strange to me how we didn’t

scream or cause a fuss. I asked my grandpa, are we crashing?” And he said, “Yeah, we are.” Trigg

had just learned about velocity in school and asked if they would perish on impact, to which her

grandpa responded that yes, they likely would.

Trigg said her grandfather wasn’t religious at the time and she didn’t want to offend him, but she

asked if it was OK for her to pray. “He said to go ahead. So, I prayed and thanked God for the

scenery because everything had been so pretty. I prayed that my family would be OK when we

died and be taken care of.”

As the ground got closer, the pair prepared for the inevitable. “Since the parachute deployed, it

wasn’t as fast as just plummeting down, but then it collapsed, and we said we loved each other.

The last time I checked the height gauge, we were like 280 feet up. I closed my eyes. I could

feel the plane start spinning vigorously.” The spin changed their trajectory from an open field to

a tree line, which broke their fall and saved their lives.

Trigg said she heard branches hitting the plane and could feel them hitting her legs through the

open frame of the airplane. Then, they landed. “I remember lifting my face off of the back of my

grandpa’s helmet, and there was blood. It felt like such a dream. I ripped off my seatbelt and told

my grandpa we had to go.”

But Grandpa Wilson wasn’t going anywhere. “He looked at me and said, I’m paralyzed. I can’t

move. So, I told him I had to find help. I started running down this gravel road. I thought I saw a

house when we were still in the air, and I was going to try and find it,” she recounted.

Unbeknownst to them, two young men driving along Highway 43 near Cottonwood spotted the

plane as it plummeted towards earth and had turned off the highway to find them. The pair

searched until they came upon a young girl, bloodied, waving her arms frantically. It was Trigg.

“I saw a blue pickup truck coming towards me, and they saw me covered in blood because my

nose was broken and pouring. They asked if I was OK and said they saw us from the highway

and had been trying to find us.”

Trigg said she led the men back to the crash site to help her grandfather. “My grandpa was

sitting there, casually, and probably in a lot of pain but still being calm as a cucumber. The guys

wanted to call 911, but my grandpa said no because he said his wife would kill him for crashing

the plane,” chuckled Trigg. “So, they drove us to my grandpa’s house, which was only two or

three kilometres away.”

Once there, Trigg’s grandma said they needed to call 911, but because her Grandpa Wilson

was already in the back of the truck, he suggested heading straight to the hospital as it would be

faster. “It would have been probably forty minutes waiting because we were 22 kilometres out of

town,” explained Trigg.

Once at the hospital, both received care for their injuries, and Grandpa Wilson was driven to

Edmonton by ambulance. “He shattered both his ankles and broke three vertebrae in his back. I

was treated for the broken nose and got butterfly stitches on a couple of scratches from the

trees,” said Trigg. She said that the two highway angels stuck around the hospital until her

grandpa was in the ambulance, and her dad arrived to make sure they were in good hands.

In the chaos of the day, Trigg didn’t catch the names of the two highway heroes. Over the years,

the pair have thought about them often, and hope to meet them, shake their hands and say

thank you. Trigg doesn’t have a lot of information to go on, but she hopes that sharing the story

will jostle someone’s memory. “They said they were headed to Fairview and said they also

sometimes go to church at what is now the Family Worship Centre in Whitecourt (behind the

uptown Tim Hortons).” Trigg said she, her sister, and her dad went to the church a few times,

including the very next Sunday, hoping to see them. They also asked at the church, but nothing

came of it.

This year, Trigg’s father had a chance encounter when he helped tow a vehicle on a lady’s

property. He mentioned that the area looked similar to where the crash happened, and the lady

confirmed it. She and her family had even helped that day alongside the men in the blue truck.

“It was a weird coincidence. She was able to piece together some things for me that I didn’t

remember, including her young son that helped, who was about my age at the time,” said Trigg.

The hope now is to find the two men. All Trigg knows is they had a blue truck and were driving

on Highway 43 in the early evening of October 3, 2003, on their way to Fairview. She figured

they were somewhere in their twenties. “It would be cool to thank them. Highway 43 is busy and

out of all the vehicles that might have seen our plane, only one stopped. I couldn’t imagine what

would have happened had they not come up to me when they did,” said Trigg.

As for Grampa Wilson, he ended up recovering from his injuries and even rebuilt his crashed

plane, and still loves to fly. “It was a surreal experience to survive. I still can’t explain the peace I

felt, as a ten-year-old. I wasn’t afraid. I trust that it was God.” If you or someone you know has

any information on this incident, or knows who the two angels are, call Amanda at 780-204-

0530 or contact the Whitecourt Press.