Far below him, pilot Mike McComb saw an obviously damaged airplane sitting on a sandbar in the San Juan River near the point where it flows into Lake Powell.
For McComb, the story had a far different outcome than the many aircraft and river accidents he’s spotted in his 10 years flying in the remote regions around Lake Powell and the Grand Canyon.
“Usually it’s not a happy ending. It looked like a bad accident,” McComb said. He spotted the plane at 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday.
But walking around the stranded aircraft was the pilot, McComb said.
“It was a good feeling to know he (the pilot) stayed by the aircraft.”
In the rugged and remote region, it would have been folly to hike out, said McComb, chief pilot of Grand Canyon Airlines, the world’s largest flightseeing service.
The downed aircraft was a “high-wing, two-seater” backcountry aircraft, especially designed for flying in rugged country and landing at small landing strips.
It had left the Animas Air Park near Durango about 11:30 a.m. on Sunday but did not return by 3 p.m. that afternoon.
According to Colorado officials, the Durango pilot had told his family he was planning to land at Nokai Dome near Lake Powell, which consists of a small strip and hangar. However, he didn’t land and was heading back to Durango when he went down.
Nobody knew where he was until McComb’s flightseeing aircraft, carrying about 15 passengers, just happened to spot it while on its scheduled Monument Valley-Grand Canyon tour.
“It looked like it was tilted over. It looked out of place,” McComb said.
McComb circled the Colorado plane, getting the coordinates which he radioed back to a medical helicopter in Page, Ariz., and also to a National Park Service plane, also based in Page.
Then he let the Durango pilot know he had been spotted.
“I circled over and wagged my wings,” McComb said.
Marianne Karraker, spokesperson for the National Park Service, said that the medical helicopter, belonging to Classic Helicopter out of Page, picked up the uninjured pilot.
The pilot told authorities he had to make an emergency landing on the sandbar because of an equipment failure.
He said that after an initial attempt to walk out, he returned to the plane and manually activated the Emergency Locating Transmitter.
Howard Pankratz: 303-954-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com
