Downdraft blamed for crash that injured two

PALMER — Judging by photographs of the wreckage, a plane crash in the Talkeetna area could have been much worse than it was, said the NTSB investigator working on the case.

“I was a little surprised that we didn’t have more injuries than we had,” said investigator Clint Johnson.

The plane, a Bellanca 8GCBC, left Palmer about 12:30 p.m. Monday with two people onboard and headed to the northeast. The pilot had filed a flight plan, Johnson said, with an estimated return time of about 6:30 p.m.

At 7:10 p.m., the Federal Aviation Administration notified the state’s Rescue Coordination Center that the plane was overdue and began checking airports along the route to see if the plane hadn’t landed elsewhere, according to a press release from the National Guard.

Shortly after 8:30 p.m., the rescue center mobilized, sending out National Guard para-rescue personnel in a Pave Hawk helicopter and a HC-130 Hercules airplane.

At 11:54 p.m., the guardsmen picked up an emergency locator beacon signal coming from the Oshetna River area, 25 miles northeast of Palmer.

“In this case, the impact was such that no doubt it went off at the impact site,” Johnson said of the beacon.

Johnson said that shortly after midnight the guard spotted the plane. The pilot had minor injuries and his passenger had some back injuries. Both were loaded into the helicopter and flown to Providence Alaska Medical Center, according to the National Guard.

Johnson said the pilot chalked up the crash to a downdraft.

“The pilot, what he told me is they were up, not spotting game, but just looking for game, they weren’t hunting,” Johnson said.

At some point, flying through mountainous terrain, Johnson said, the pilot told him the plane got caught in a downdraft. The pilot said he tried to recover and almost did but ended up crashing flat on the ground.

The plane is registered to a Will Barickman of Sutton. A call to a Palmer phone number listed under his name was not answered Thursday.

Neither the NTSB nor the National Guard released the names of the two men in the plane. But Johnson said the pilot was from the Valley and was very honest and straightforward in talking with investigators.

“Very forthcoming and pretty thankful that it wasn’t a lot worse,” Johnson said.

He said they spoke on Tuesday and that he hasn’t talked to him since.

“They were hopefully supposed to get the airplane out of there I think yesterday,” Johnson said Thursday afternoon.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.