Five people walked away with only minor injuries after their single-engine plane crashed and burned in Farmington Canyon below Francis Peak Tuesday morning.
The Piper 32 took off from Sky Park Airport in Woods Cross and was headed east to Fort Bridger, Wyo., but failed to gain enough altitude to clear the peak, according to Sgt. Kevin McCloud of the Davis County Sheriff's Department.The survivors' names were not available at press time, but one investigator confirmed their last name as Merkle, a family from Washington, D.C.
The survivors include the 36 year-old husband and pilot; his 31-year-old wife; two children, a boy, 2, and a girl, 3. Also in the plane was an 18- to 20-year-old woman. Investigators say they aren't sure if she is related to the Merkle family or not.
The plane crashed about 7:30 a.m. about a half-mile below the Skyline Drive intersection, between 2,500 and 3,000 feet below the radar domes on Francis Peak.
McCloud said the pilot told him the airplane's altimeter was showing he was climbing at about 500 feet per minute but it wasn't enough to pull the six-passenger Piper aircraft above the peak.
The pilot said he began looking for a place to land the aircraft when he realized he wasn't going to clear the peak and that the canyon is too narrow to turn around.
"He looked at the road and saw it was too narrow, so he started looking for another place to put it down," said McCloud. "The ground looks a lot flatter than it really is from up there," he said.
The aircraft clipped a pine tree and then its wings sheared off when it hit the ground, McCloud said. The fuselage slid downhill about 100 yards from the impact site, coming to rest on a stretch of the road.
The pilot and four passengers scrambled out as the craft caught fire and was destroyed.
The survivors were walking up the road toward the radar domes when an FAA employee, William Meier, on his way to work at the radar tower, saw the wreckage.
"He looked around and didn't find anyone, so he was driving on up to the tower to report it when he came across the passengers, about a quarter mile up the road," said McCloud.
Meier drove them to the tower and reported the crash.
McCloud said the sheriff's department first called for a medical helicopter to pick up the survivors who declined to fly again. They were taken to Lakeview Hospital in Bountiful by a South Davis Fire District ambulance.
The burning aircraft started a small fire on the hillside but the flames didn't spread, McCloud said, avoiding a potentially disastrous brushfire.
"They were lucky, there's no doubt about that. They got out of the plane in time, with only a few cuts and bruises, and maybe a broken rib or two," said McCloud.
Federal Aviation Administration Spokesman Mitch Barker said the pilot had received a weather briefing before takeoff. An FAA investigator was on the scene shortly after the crash and a National Transportation Safety Board investigator in Seattle had been assigned to lead an investigation.
Staff writers Brian T. West and Steve Fidel contributed to this story.