Report released on midair crash

KNIK-FAIRVIEW — The pilots of two planes that collided in midair Jan. 31 apparently made no radio contact in the moments before impact, authorities said.

The National Transportation Safety Board released a report Tuesday describing the moments leading up to the collision, based in part on the testimony of one of the pilots, as well as witnesses on the ground. The report does not contain a definitive cause for the collision, which may be in the final report, usually issued a year or more from the date of the crash, according to NTSB area chief Clint Johnson.

Both pilots survived the crash. On-duty Wildlife Trooper Levi Duell, 35, of Anchorage sustained moderate injuries in the crash. Jeffry Bara, 52, of Eagle River received life-threatening injuries.

Duell told NTSB investigators that after leaving the Wasilla Airport bound for Beluga, he climbed to between 1,500 and 2,000 feet above sea level (about 1,000 feet above the ground, according to witnesses), and put the plane in cruise mode, according to the report. He was flying level with the sun directly in front of him, according to the report.

Investigators have been unable to speak with Bara because of his medical condition, Johnson said. Bara received more serious injuries, according to Johnson.

“We’re giving the family some space,” he said. “All they related to us is: he’s stable at this point.”

Duell said he saw the other plane for only split second.

“He saw a momentary flash in the upper left corner of his windscreen, which was instantaneously followed by the collision,” the report says.

Bara’s plane had taken off from Birchwood Airport near Chugiak bound for a non-airport landing site near Johnson Creek.

A witness who observed the collision from the ground told investigators the planes ran into each other at approximately 90 degrees, and that neither plane attempted to avoid the other.

Another witness, Jennie Sandland, an air traffic controller with the National Air Traffic Controller’s Association who lives near the crash site, was out cutting firewood with her husband Mark when she spotted one of the planes immediately after the crash. She heard an airplane engine revving few times and then cut. Hearing the engine is unusual, though plane engines turning on and off are not, Sandland said.

“This is a big training area, so you’re accustomed to hearing these small planes cut the engine,” she said. “They’re usually pretty high for that. This was different in that I heard engine noise and than I couldn’t hear it.”

Then she spotted Duell’s plane.

“When I looked up, I could see the trooper plane in a dive, and he wasn’t pulling out,” she said. “I just dropped to my knees and prayed. At that point, I didn’t know there was a midair collision. That would have been behind a spruce tree for me.”

She eventually lost sight of the trooper plane among the area’s high tree line.

As his plane plummeted approximately 1,000 feet toward the ground, Duell apparently regained limited control of the plane’s elevators — control surfaces located on the plane’s rear wings — even as the plane kept descending, according to the report.

“The last thing the trooper pilot remembered was entering the trees,” the report says.

Sandland said she noticed something odd about the plummeting plane.

“I was watching him and I was praying, but before he ever goes out of sight, I heard an impact,” she said.

Mark had been inside, retrieving fuel for the chainsaw, and when he returned, Jennie told him what she had seen.

They called authorities immediately. Dispatchers told them they had already received multiple reports about the wreck and emergency personnel were responding. Unwilling to wait around, the Sandlands grabbed a handheld radio and headed in the direction where Jennie saw the plane come down. En route, they spotted an Alaska State Troopers helicopter hovering over a portion of the woods, and changed their course.

It wasn’t until Jennie Sandland laid eyes on the wreckage — Bara’s plane — that she realized two planes were involved.

“The other one that I saw was red and white with red wings,” she said.

Some emergency responders split off to search for Duell’s plane, Sandland said. They eventually found it about 1,000 feet away, according to the NTSB report.

The Sandlands began working with first responders to remove Bara from his plane. A neighbor brought a carpentry tool to help cut away the wreckage of the plane, Sandland said.

“He fell a long ways,” she said. “The assumption was that he was dead. It was about 10 minutes before we figured out he was alive. His legs were pinned real bad.”

By that point, the Sandlands had become bystanders at a scene swarming with emergency responders focused on saving Bara’s life.

The Sandlands never contemplated staying at home, and despite owning a SuperCub, Sandland said showing up to the wreckage site wasn’t particularly terrifying.

“You would think it would be (scary),” she said. “I don’t know if it’s first responders or the nature of the job. Something inside you just ground and you go to work.

“I think I would have felt a whole lot worse if I had just stayed on the property.”

The investigation into the crash is still in the preliminary stages, according to the NTSB. Investigators this week were focused on the radios in either plane.

“Both of these airplanes had digital radios installed, so we can’t tell what frequency they were on,” Johnson said.

Investigators were removing the electronic chips from the radios and inserting them into other radios, to see if their last radio tuning could be identified, Johnson said.

The crash drove home outreach efforts by the FAA, which has radar coverage from Anchorage as far afield as the opposite side of the Knik Arm, Sandland said. Pilots in the area frequently hesitate before contacting local air traffic controllers — federally trained personnel that man control towers and radar facilities at federally regulated airports — when controllers can help, according to Sandland.

“We have very good radar out in this area,” she said. “Pilots can call Anchorage and get traffic advisory services. Then they’ve got another set of eyes looking.”

Pilots often feel they have to have a transponder in order to be identified by radar operators across the arm, but that’s not the case, Sandland said. Some of the more remote airports and landing strips to the north can sometimes prove difficult because of mountains (Talkeetna is one example), but the area surrounding the Cook Inlet can be monitored to very low altitudes, Sandland said.

Pilots may request radar advisory services via radio channel 119.1 and inform controllers they are operating without a transponder, Sandland said.

Contact Brian O’Connor at 352-2269, brian.oconnor@frontiersman.com, or on Twitter @reporterbriano.