On April 22 at the Hamilton airport south of Missoula a Short Sherpa smokejumper plane — Jumper 63 or N163Z incurred “substantial” damage on landing after a training flight from MSO down to Ravalli County.
The Forest Service acknowledges the incident happened, but not in those words. They don’t want to talk about it beyond saying “we can’t talk about it.” If there’s any kind of an incident with F&AM aircraft that triggers an NTSB investigation, then the USFS can’t talk to us (the public and firefighters and fire aviation readers and media enemies) because the ONLY people who can speak about this incident are those with the NTSB. And they’re not readily available. (05/11: It’s been 16 days and zero replies from them to either of my emails.)
The Forest Service definitely can’t tell reporters and editors what’s up with an aircraft incident when the NTSB takes over. They can’t talk about the timeline, the personnel involved, the causes or results of the incident, or anything at all related to the incident. We didn’t ask for any of that.
But they also can’t confirm whether the aircraft registration was current if you point out to them that some records online indicate that registration was lapsed back in September, and they won’t say who’s responsible for updating the registration or records thereof. (One helpful person told me the N-number is current.)
We’re not talking about a multiple-fatality incident on a fire here. The smokejumper aircraft for some reason exited the runway (depending on who you talk to, the brakes may or may not have seized up or frozen up, and the aircraft may have “lost control” (though it’s probabably a pilot who loses contraol, not the aircraft), and then it “veered” off the runway. Persons who were involved or knowledgeable about the incident but who prefer to not share their names in public say that brakes on a Sherpa on landing do not “freeze up” without pilot involvement, the plane did not lose control, and “veering” from the runway likely wouldn’t cause “substantial” damage — which a couple of non-NTSB reports say it did.
This was a training flight with a Sherpa jump ship in late April; the aircraft left MSO mid-day and flew around on a training run with a pilot and two passengers and then had some kind of “incident” when it landed at Hamilton (KHRF).
The USFS has more than a couple of Short Sherpas registered for smokejumper and other purposes.
According to the FAA Aviation Safety Information Analysis and Sharing (ASIAS), substantial damage was incurred in an incident in which “BRAKES LOCKED AND LOST CONTROL, VEERING OFF THE RUNWAY at HAMILTON.” On the next day, the Helena FSDO was in charge. The FSDO (the Flight Standards District Office of the FAA) includes three groups — Operations and Airworthiness and Avionics — each of which has inspectors to run investigations. We’re betting the first report info will come from someone besides U.S. Forest Service employees, NINE of whom refused to even acknowledge this aircraft incident occurred.