September crash killed three in wilderness

Report: Pilot strayed

The pilot of a Forest Service contract airplane that crashed in the Great Bear Wilderness last September veered from his intended course and had limited experience flying in mountainous terrain, an agency investigation has found.

A Forest Service investigative team released its findings Wednesday, along with a series of recommendations aimed at improving the agency's air safety program.

Three people died in the Sept. 20 crash, which drew national media attention after two survivors hiked out of the mountains south of Glacier National Park after being presumed dead.

Randy Moore, a regional forester who led the investigation and was in Kalispell to discuss it Wednesday, stressed that the causes of the crash were not the focus of the investigation. That task rests with an ongoing investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board.

But the Forest Service investigation did reach conclusions that suggest what happened and how similar accidents might be avoided in the future.

Investigators found that Kalispell pilot Jim Long had intended to fly up the Middle Fork Flathead River corridor to the flight's destination, the Schafer Meadows wilderness airstrip. In his last radio contact with dispatchers, Long reported that he was over Essex, following a flight path that would take him over the Middle Fork River into the wilderness area.

Instead, Long had veered off course into the Tunnel Creek drainage - possibly mistaking the creek for the river - about five miles short of Essex.

"He veered off from his intended travel route. We really don't know why he did that," Moore said.

The plane ended up crashing at the head of the Tunnel Creek drainage. The Cessna 206 hit a rocky area, with the wings impacting a stump and a tree. The impact caused the plane to flip and explode into flames.

Long, 60, and Davita Bryant, 32, were killed in the crash. Ken Good, Jodee Hogg and Matthew Ramige escaped the aircraft with burns and other injuries and survived the night. Good, 58, died from his injuries the following morning, and Hogg and Ramige hiked out of the crash site before rescuers arrived. The two survivors found their way to help along U.S. 2 the next day, after rescuers had declared that no one had survived the crash.

As employees with the Forest Service's Rocky Mountain Research Center, Bryant, Hogg and Ramige were flying into Schafer Meadows to conduct vegetation plot surveys. Good, a Flathead National Forest employee, was going in to do maintenance on communications equipment.

While investigators said Long was a "highly skilled" pilot with considerable flying experience totaling 2,600 hours, he had only five hours of solo time and five hours of supervised training hours in the mountain corridors leading to Schafer Meadows, the report found.

The investigative team found that the Forest Service's contract with Edwards Jet Center, which employed Long, did not specify the requirements for a pilot's flight experience in wilderness. Nor did the contract define what is meant by "typical terrain" flight experience. Contract pilots are required to have at least 200 hours of "typical terrain" flight experience, whereas Long's pilot records indicated he had 100 hours in "typical terrain."

Moore said Long had been certified by a Forest Service regional flight inspector after being interviewed and taking a test flight with the inspector.

The investigative team recommends that the agency review and modify by November current requirements and approvals for backcountry pilot experience, and develop a contractual definition for "typical terrain."

It also recommends that the agency fully implement the use of an "Automated Flight Following" program, which involves onboard equipment that transmits a global positioning location for aircraft every two minutes, Moore said.

If that equipment had been on Long's aircraft, search and rescue teams would have been able to track the plane's actual flight path much faster, he said.

Instead, initial search efforts were focused in the Middle Fork drainage south of Essex, Long's last reported location.

Finally, the report recommends that the Forest Service consider requiring employees to wear protective clothing and having standard survival gear on backcountry flights.

Family members of the victims and the survivors were briefed about the investigation's findings Wednesday morning.

"I think mainly they wanted to understand what happened," Moore said.

"And they also wanted to make sure it doesn't happen again," added Marcia Patton-Mallory, director of the Rocky Mountain Research Station in Fort Collins, Colo.

Family members of the victims have questioned in the past whether the plane should have taken off at all, given the erratic weather along that day's planned flight path.

"A decision to go or not go starts with pilot," Moore said, and the chief of party, Ken Good, would also have some say in that decision.

"We believe that both the pilot and the chief of party were OK with flying," Moore said.

Weather conditions that day were "spotty" with a combination of clear and cloudy skies that would not prevent flying under visual flight rules, said Gary Morgan, a regional aviation safety manager who was part of the investigative team.

Local pilots typically reach Schafer Meadows by flying over a saddle near Mount Aeneas on the Swan Mountain Range. Long did not take that route because "the mountain passes were obscured (by cloud cover)," Morgan said.

Moore added that soon before taking off, Long had spoken with another pilot who had "just made the same flight." Long was advised to follow the Middle Fork River corridor into the wilderness airstrip, Moore said.