Boise news is reporting SAR is gonna bust out looking for an airplane at sunrise.
Yesterday (monday) afternoon TWF to Bountiful, UT. never made it.

lowflyin'G3 wrote:Boise news is reporting SAR is gonna bust out looking for an airplane at sunrise.
Yesterday (monday) afternoon TWF to Bountiful, UT. never made it.

I hope no one went down. Northern Utah had low ceilings all day yesterday.

Heavy snow currently in N UT. Any more info on this?

Located. No happy ending.

Matt 7GCBC wrote:Located. No happy ending.

Anything else??? All I could get off the internet was that it was a Piper Commanche and they lost radio contact near the Utah border.

Missing plane found east of Glenns Ferry in Elmore County; pilot dead

A small Caldwell plane that went missing Monday night en route to Boutinful, Utah, has been found crashed in a remote desert area of Elmore County, about 30 miles east of Glenns Ferry.

Officials in Owyhee, Twin Falls and Elmore counties had been looking for the along the borders of the three counties early Tuesday.

A Twin Falls County Sheriff's deputy said that the pilot of the plane is dead, and it appears that there were no passengers in the plane.

The plane, which fell off radar at 11:55 p.m. Monday night, was found at 10:24 a.m. Tuesday. The plane was found within 600 yards of its last reported coordinates, said Twin Falls County Sheriff Sgt. Dan Thom.

Thom said the case is now being turned over to the Elmore County Sheriff's Office and Federal Aviation Administration officials.

"We won't open the plane until the FAA gets here," Thom said.

The missing plane is a six-seat Piper Comanche registered to Carl Nielsen.

Caldwell Airport manager Curt Hawkins said Nielsen told him Tuesday morning that the plane was sold to a Utah man named Craig Jewett. It is unknown if Jewett was flying the plane home or if someone else flew it for him.

Hawkins said a flight plan is not required of planes that will be flying out of instrument conditions, or "out of the clouds."

Hawkins said the Comanche left the Caldwell Airport Monday night and was bound for Bountiful, Utah.


"plane was sold to a Utah man named Craig Jewett. It is unknown if Jewett was flying the plane home or if someone else flew it for him."
Initial thoughts or questions to throw out. Wonder how much familiarity with the aircraft; recent purchase? - had the aircraft been sitting?; Nighttime poor weather on the last day of a 3 day weekend - what were the external pressures for flight. I'm sure more info over the next several days. Hope the media will work to get an accurate story.
Very sad.

Tragic! I'm surprised they are throwing names out there without confirming the identity first and notifiying next of kin.

Thoughts and prayers for the family.

I've said it once and I'll say it again. There are very few compelling reasons to launch cross country in a single engine piston airplane at night.

gb

I just saw the news pic of the thing (Comanche) and it further compells me to NOT bust out single engine, in the dark, uncurrent on the guages.
It is inverted and about two to three feet thick with stress ripples from impact all through the skins showing.
Was making power by the looks of the prop if that's any consolation.
There was some talk about a "door problem" just before they lost him on radar. Musta been one helluva problem.
Gotta know why you'd have to leave so bad in a single, supposedly new to him, at night, over mountains, with a fairly large weather system moving through.
One thing's for sure, gravity is still operational in Idaho. Soooo be careful.

My ex partner in the previous 182B would routinely fly from Brookings, Or to Weed, CA at night. It is over mountains all the way. Not for me.

Tim

The FAA database states the pilot had a student certificate. The news in Utah says he left four kids and a wife at home. Sad deal. The news also says a friend flying in another plane lost radio contact with him after the pilot reported he was having some "instrument problems." Clearly a student (or low time pilot) flying in an unfamiliar plane he just purchased (and a slick retract at that) on a stormy night cross country is a recipe for disaster. My heart goes out to his family. We should all use this as a lesson and set our own personal limits to minimize unnecessary risks.

I never thought it would happen to me until four months ago when I found myself as a backseat passenger in a single engine cessna with a total engine failure. It happened at dusk and the empty field selected for landing turned out to be a fruit orchard. We were all lucky to walk away from that one without a scratch. Never again will I fly a single at night.

Student on solo cross country in unfamiliar plane. Who ok'd the flight for him. How many instructors would signt this one off. How bout you MTV?

Looks worse the the guy with the nose strut tied in place with a piece of rope.

Tim

I guess I'd wait to see the actual report before I jumped to conclusions about the qualifications of the pilot.

No doubt that the risk of flying, particularly in weather, increases significantly at night, single or twin.

It will be interesting to see the facts in this one.

The fact is, however, that a family is mourning the loss of a father. That is tragic.

MTV

Flying at night for the recreational pilot is absolutely ludicrus. The FAA requiring night flying for a license also just shows how stupid some of the dummies are in the big brother FAA gov.

One thing, atleast he didn't have the rest of the family with him.

When I was learning to fly, I was told hat 90 percent of fatalites were related to fuel, or flying into something that wasn't seen. I fly daytime, with fuel in the tanks, and hope nothing else goes wrong.

180driver wrote:The FAA database states the pilot had a student certificate. The news in Utah says he left four kids and a wife at home. Sad deal. The news also says a friend flying in another plane lost radio contact with him after the pilot reported he was having some "instrument problems." Clearly a student (or low time pilot) flying in an unfamiliar plane he just purchased (and a slick retract at that) on a stormy night cross country is a recipe for disaster. My heart goes out to his family. We should all use this as a lesson and set our own personal limits to minimize unnecessary risks.

I never thought it would happen to me until four months ago when I found myself as a backseat passenger in a single engine cessna with a total engine failure. It happened at dusk and the empty field selected for landing turned out to be a fruit orchard. We were all lucky to walk away from that one without a scratch. Never again will I fly a single at night.

http://www.abc4.com/content/news/top%20 ... MFqKg.cspx

Watch the video on the RH side of the page. Sad Sad Sad. Four boys under 14 and a wife at home.

The report says he had 60hrs. Whatever the case, Nighttime flight over mountains in known foul weather.........well its already been said above.

180Driver, was the crash you were referring to a Cessna 205 over Santaquin??? Always wondered what happened on that one.

I feel sometimes like I'm learning the hard knocks of aviation at the expense of others. Kinda unsettling ya know.

That is one of the reasons that I am here, to learn from others, and hopefully I can do something to help another from my experiences.

ary

They say you should learn from other's mistakes, you don't have enough time to make them all yourself....

Tragic indeed

If he was in-fact a new pilot, I cant help but wonder what kind of training or lack of, was given to him in order to make so many poor judgement decisions.
Since I didn't know him I wouldn't want to speculate, I am never surprised anymore when it comes to what people may or may not be capable of.

I prefer not to hypothesize on these things, but based on the above info, will make one here. Unless I have my regulations screwed up, student pilots cannot fly solo at night. There is a requirement of 3 hours of dual night time logged for the private cert. I'm not as familiar with the recreational pilot license - aren't they limited to day VFR, or is there a signoff they can get? Hypothesis: If the FAA site has him listed as a student pilot, he may have been a newly minted private pilot. The records for pilot licenses and aircraft registration usually lag up to 3-4 months.
As to this being mountainous terrain; while he did have mountains along the planned route of flight, sounds like he went down in the Snake river "valley". My point being that just because it's not "mountains" doesn't make it flat farmland with lots of landing options. Plenty of rolling hills in the Midwest that would be about as bad - keep that in mind when making personal minimums list.
Certainly not very populated where he went down and on overcast nights you might be able to log honest instrument time in "VFR" conditions.

Quote: "The FAA requiring night flying for a license also just shows how stupid some of the dummies are in the big brother FAA gov."
I suspect this statement was made with the thinking that he might have been a student trying to log required night time? Otherwise, my thinking is there's all sorts of things that are best to be introduced as a student with an instructor aboard.