Plane crash kills two near Lake Aeneas

Hungry Horse News

Two Whitefish residents died in a plane crash Tuesday afternoon near Lake Aeneas in the Jewel Basin, south of Columbia Falls.

Martin White, 61, and his wife Penelope "Penny" White, 54, died on impact when their Cessna Turbo 210 spiraled out of control, violently colliding with the snowy ground near the lake sometime around 3:40 p.m.

The retirees, relocated from Southern California, had taken off from Glacier Park International Airport only moments earlier and were believed to be on their way to an air show in Dallas.

Flathead County Sheriff Jim Dupont speculated that Penny was behind the yoke, although both were licensed pilots. He added that the crash is still under investigation, at least until the National Transportation Safety Board investigations can be completed.

"Obviously, we don't know what happened," he said. "We believe Penny was flying. It was her and her husband, they were going on a recreational trip."

Dupont explained that they were on what is called an instrumental flight plan, a flight pattern that has direct radar control in questionable weather conditions and remains in contact with controllers from Salt Lake City, the city that governs this sector of airspace. Salt Lake's remote radar station is located on Blacktail Mountain and it recorded the initial altitude as well as the sudden drop.

"They were given an altitude shortly after takeoff," Dupont said. "They noticed an abrupt change, a decrease in their altitude."

All contact was then lost and officials acted swiftly. The protocol for a situation like that is for Langley Air Force Base to be notified, who in turn contacts the Montana Aeronautics Division in Helena. From there, a local branch of the division summons its search and rescue volunteer team and the task of locating the crash site begins.

Once the crash site is actually located, the investigation is then turned over to the Sheriff's office.

Ray Sanders, local coordinator for the aeronautics division, detailed the process.

"All we do is search for the airplane," he said. "When we find an airplane that has been lost, once we find it we turn it over to the Sheriff's office. In this one, we treat it as a missing aircraft until we find it because sometimes people do strange things, sometimes you lose it off radar."

When the search for the Whites began, the Sheriff was on board to help out the process.

"I went out Tuesday, (we were) notified of the pending search for the aircraft," Dupont said. "We had a pretty rough idea of where it was because of radar contact. The aircraft was still burning profusely. It looked like a near vertical penetration."

Dupont discovered the fiery wreckage Tuesday night around 7:30 after leaving West Glacier by helicopter.

Tom Snyder, of the Sheriff's office and the North Valley Search and Rescue, said that the plane was decimated when he and Dupont went to recover bodies Wednesday morning.

"It's a crater, basically," he said. "It looked like the aircraft came pretty much straight down into it."

Although the cause is yet to be determined, there are several preliminary theories. As the plane approached the peak of Mount Aeneas, it encountered a thunderstorm that is believed to have stalled the wings and contributed greatly to the freefall. It lost altitude at a staggering rate and fell to the ground near the west edge of Lake Aeneas.

Snyder said that ice might have been another factor.

"There was known icing reported from a computer airplane," he said. "This is one rumor and also there was a rumor of a thunder cell in the area. I don't have any ground to substantiate either one of those, that's all pure speculation on our part."

It is the most recent in a string of fatal crashes in the Flathead valley, a frightening and unpredictable trend for Dupont. At least 10 local individuals have died in area crashes within the past 12 months.

"In the last year, we've had quite a few," he said. "We've lost about four (planes) I think. That's rare. It's chaos theory - you don't know why it happens."

One important fact Dupont pointed out about the airspace over Mount Aeneas, to dispel any misconceptions that might be dangerous, is that it is an airway - basically a highway in the sky - and that plenty of planes frequent that route without difficulty.

"That is the airway from Kalispell to Great Falls," he said. "There's a lot of traffic in that area."

The National Transportation Safety Board will do a formal investigation of the crash. The final reports, however, can take a year or more from the time of the accident.