Engine dies, pilot safely lands airplane in hayfield

BY TODD ADAMS

“That’s not good,” Shean Merwin and wife Kristina said to each other when the engine of their plane suddenly seized up and died somewhere north of Clayton just after noon on Monday.

But Merwin was able to catch thermals and safely glide to a dead-stick landing in Preston Cutler’s hayfield about 12:30 p.m. Merwin, Kristina, daughter Kylee and Jiggy, the family Chihuahua, were all unharmed. His 1962 vintage Mooney 120 airplane was unscratched, since he was able to brake to a stop 10-20 feet short of a barbed-wire fence.

Merwin and his family were southbound from Hamilton, Montana to Bullhead City, Arizona. It was Kylee’s first cross-country flight. An hour in, they had just flown past Thompson Creek Mine when their airplane lost oil pressure and the engine quit.

“It seized, it just locked up” Shean told The Challis Messenger. The crankcase had cracked.

“The prop went wham!” and stopped moving, Kristina said.

Shean turned his plane and headed downstream, following ridges parallel to the Salmon River corridor. The thermals coming off the ridges gave him an extra 300 feet of altitude as the pilot and instructor glided his plane downstream, headed towards the Challis airport. He wasn’t sure he could make it, so he kept an eye out for a good landing spot. He found one in the recently mown hayfield between the Howard and Preston Cutler houses, on the east side of Highway 75 and the river.

Shean had enough altitude to scout the landing. He did a 360-degree turn over the hayfield before coming in for a landing from the south, facing downriver. He waited until he had cleared some trees and was past the Cutlers’ irrigation pivot before touching down between two wheel lines to avoid what looked like a ditch from the air. Turns out it was just a groove cut into the hayfield by the pivot’s tires, but he didn’t know it at the time.

It all happened very fast until it was time for the plane to stop, Kristin said. “We sure thought we were going to go through the fence,” Kristin said, but Shean was able to hit the brakes and stop the plane at a point that looked to be about 10 feet short. A slight uphill helped.

“She had the brakes on, too” Shawn said of his wife, even though the passenger seat doesn’t have brakes. “I would have done like the Flintstones to stop if I could have,” Kristin said.

“Scary,” is what Kylee, 10, said of the experience. She was silent until they rolled to a stop, then started crying.

But it was also a fun experience for Kylee, as she and her parents made some new friends in the Cutler family. Kylee spent the night and made friends with Preston and Jamie Cutler’s kids, Preslie, Bailey and Austin.

“See, they act like they’ve been friends all their lives,” Kristin said as the girls played together in the Cutlers’ yard Tuesday.

The Cutlers loaned their car to Shean and Kristin so the couple could drive to Challis, take care of business and stay at a local motel to rest up.

Jamie Cutler said she saw the plane coming in for a silent landing. “Look, Preslie, there’s an airplane,” she told her daughter. “That’s not right.” Half-jokingly, Jamie asked husband Preston if he’d hired a crop duster.

Jamie lost sight of the plane as it dropped below some trees, then saw it roll to a stop. From where she was, it looked like the plane had stopped in a kiddie pool in her yard.

Preslie thought the whole thing was awesome, her mother said, since her new friend Kylee got to spend the night.

Shean said he appreciates the Cutlers for their hospitality and his fellow pilots for relaying his mayday radio message to authorities. The emergency system worked like clockwork, he said.

The Custer County Sheriff’s Office got the call from air traffic controllers at the Bullhead City airport about 12:07 p.m., Deputy Levi Maydole said, and started looking for the airplane immediately. They called Thompson Creek Mine officials, who fortunately hadn’t seen the Merwin’s plane go down near the mine.

At 12:48 p.m., the sheriff’s office got a call from the Cutlers. “They were pretty shaken, but down safely and happy to have that hayfield where it was,” Maydole said.

The family is driving back to the Hamilton area today to reassure family members that they’re all OK, Shean and Kristin told The Messenger. They’re not yet sure how they’ll get back to Bullhead City, where Shean is a flight instructor for Sheble Aviation. It will be awhile before the plane flies again. It’s sitting on the Cutler’s lawn, next to the driveway. The plane will be put on a flatbed trailer and hauled to the Challis airport when a new engine arrives.

Training

Both Shean, 39, and Kristin are glider pilots and Shean said he has more than 15,000 hours of flying experience gained over 30 years. He’s flown in the Idaho and Montana backcountry and has instructed students in flying single- and multi-engine airplanes, seaplanes and gliders.

So, when the engine quit, nobody panicked. Training took over as he glided and looked for the best landing spot. “I did what I tell my students,” Shean said. “Fly the airplane.” The Mooney doesn’t glide as well as a sailplane, but Shean was still able to catch enough updrafts. It was the last shot he had, since the Salmon River canyon narrows downstream of the Cutler ranch and the Bayhorse Bridge. “Good training pays off,” the pilot said.

“We just had to make some new friends,” Shean said, jokingly. “We thought we’d drop in on the Cutlers.”

“You could have called ahead,” Jamie Cutler replied.

“We made some new friends, so we’ll definitely come back” to visit the Cutlers under better circumstances, Shean said.

What a GREAT story! I related big time, though I don't fly a Mooney I flew over the Thompson mine twice in the last few weeks, and have also been doing some deadstick ridge soaring, a couple hours over 3 flights, and as out there as it may seem to some, I like to think it may come in handy sometime It also really seems to help the average fuel burn. It does seem that when the excrement strikes the fan the glider guys come out good. Captain Sully the most recent high profile example.

That's the most uplifting story I've heard since yesterdays detailed/new info account of Bin Ladens last moments as related on NPR, that was a great way to start a Monday morning

The glide ratio is the reason (safety factor) I put both the Sportsman leading edge and the Wing-X wing extensions on my C182. My third wheel may still be in the 'wrong place', but my glide ratio went up a bunch with those two additions. (See the respective websites for the numbers) I would quote numbers here, but I got scoffed at last time, so I will leave it at 'significantly improved glide performance' for such an occasion as this one.....

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