Turboprop Plane Crashes in Butte, Montana
14 Dead Including Seven Children

Fourteen people were killed when a single-engine turboprop plane from California crashed in a cemetery in Butte, Montana, on Sunday afternoon, March 23, 2009.  The aircraft, a Pilatus PC-12, was en route from Oroville, California to Bozeman, Montana when the pilot changed course to Butte for unknown reasons.  The plane then nosedived into a cemetery 500 feet short of Bert Mooney Airport in Butte, bursting into flames on impact.  All aboard the aircraft, 14 people, including seven children, were killed.

The flight is believed to have been taking its passengers on a skiing trip. 

Officials gathered around the crash site in Holy Cross Cemetery on Monday morning, gathering information that will hopefully shed light on the cause of the deadly crash.

Investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board offered few details at a press conference held hours after the crash.   No cause for the crash has been given but FAA spokesman, Les Dorr, has said that the Pilatus PC-12 is usually built to carry 11 people.  It is still unclear if extra weight was a factor in the crash, since seven of the 14 people aboard were small children. 

According to the National Weather Service, it was partly cloudy with visibility of 10 miles and winds were blowing from the northwest around 10 mph at the time of the crash.

The pilot of the doomed aircraft gave no sign of distress to air traffic controllers when it requested to divert the flight to the Bert Mooney Airport in Butte.  Like many small airports in America, the Butte airport has no radar control, which would require a pilot to switch to a radio frequency and use visual rules in addition to following specific procedures for landing.   According to officials, the aircraft did not have cockpit voice or flight data recorders and was not licensed to carry commercial passengers.

The plane was registered to Eagle Cap Leasing Inc. of Enterprise, Oregon, whose president, Irving M. Feldkamp of Redlands, California, has been a pilot since 1994 and is certified for instrument flight.  Feldkamp has yet to comment on the crash.

The crash is the fourth major plane accident in the U.S. in about three months.

For more than two decades, Baum Hedlund has represented aviation accident victims in some of the worst aviation disasters in our history. The firm’s aviation accident attorneys have litigated the cases of more than 500 passengers for aviation personal injury or wrongful death claims across the United States and around the world.

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