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Fellow pilot tells how fun trip turned tragic in Idaho

Katy Moeller
Idaho Statesman
Utah pilot Craig Jewett was having the time of his life before he crashed, says the friend who helped him on a trip to Caldwell to pick up the first plane he'd ever bought.

"He was out there having fun to its fullest," said Warren Kenner, who is, nevertheless, baffled by how much Jewett veered off their agreed-upon flight plan for the trip back to Utah.

Jewett died in a crash that left his plane upside down and in pieces in the remote desert of Elmore County. He is survived by his family, including four children.

Federal investigators are examining the wreckage, studying radar recordings and trying to piece together the story of what led up to the crash.

Much of what happened that night cannot be explained by red blips on a radar screen or hunks of crushed metal.

The two men, who live in the Salt Lake City suburb of Centerville, flew out to Caldwell on Sunday in Kenner's single-engine Cherokee.

"It was kind of last-minute. He called me, and said, 'Can you go with me and pick up my plane?'" said Kenner, a pilot who has been flying for six years and has more than 500 hours of flight time.

The pair flew to Caldwell Sunday in Kenner's single-engine Cherokee; Jewett flew the plane, and it was an uneventful roughly two-hour trip.

Kenner said Jewett was excited about buying his first plane. Federal Aviation Administration records show Jewett was certified as a student pilot in September of 2007.

The single-engine 1965 Piper Comanche that Jewett bought from a Caldwell man is a more complex plane than the Cherokee he flew from Utah to pick it up.

And that's part of why the original plan was for Kenner to fly the Comanche back to Utah. But Jewett couldn't wait to fly his plane, Kenner said.

"Craig indicated that he had 15 hours flying a Comanche. That's what he told me multiple times," Kenner said, noting that Jewett flew planes at Bountiful Skypark in Bountiful, Utah. "He looked comfortable in it."

Part of what makes the Comanche a more complex plane is its retractable landing gear and constant speed propeller.

Jewett dreamed of flying even bigger, faster and more complex planes.

"He wanted to start with a twin-engine," Kenner said. "Everybody beat on him until he came down to a single-engine."

Nevertheless, some aviation experts believe Jewett was too inexperienced to fly the Comanche, particularly at night and during cloudy conditions.

"When you get an overcast night, and you don't have a moon to go by, and there are no lights on the ground, you get vertigo in a hurry," Caldwell Airport manager Curt Hawkins said.

At about 8 p.m. Sunday, the men flew east out of Caldwell to return to the Salt Lake City area - Kenner in the Cherokee and Jewett in the Comanche.

The Comanche is a much faster plane, so Kenner expected to be trailing Jewett all the way home.

They decided to follow Interstate 84, but they did not file a flight plan to let others know that; a flight plan isn't required under visual flight rules.

"The plan was: Just fly straight home, and I'll follow you," Kenner said.

But that's not what happened.

Kenner lost sight of Jewett soon after take-off, but the pair were in on-and-off radio communication for as long as 40 minutes.

"We talked about the weather. You could see mountain obscurations," Kenner said.

Jewett told Kenner that he was ascending and descending rapidly, like a roller coaster.

"Early on, I think he was doing quite a bit of that for fun. You get a new toy," Kenner said.

Kenner advised him to turn off his strobe lights to avoid night blindness.

At one point, Jewett mentioned that he was cold because the door was not fully latched, and he thought he might put down in Mountain Home to close it.

Kenner lost radio contact with Jewett when he passed the mountains in Twin Falls, and he didn't think anything of it.

He was later baffled to see radar that showed Jewett never made it to Twin Falls, but instead was circling between Mountain Home and Boise when he crashed.

"It could have been Craig having fun, it could have been Craig having a problem. There are a lot of I-don't-know's," Kenner said.

The 36-year-old father of five waited at the airport in Bountiful for two hours before heading home Sunday night.

His plane iced over during that time, so he wasn't able to fly back to look for Jewett until the next day.

"I made a lot of calls to local authorities in the Twin Falls area," he said.

The next day he flew back through Idaho, stopping off at rural airports where Jewett might have stopped for any number of reasons.

But word of Jewett's disappearance didn't reach the Federal Aviation Administration Flight Service Station in Prescott, Ariz., until 9:07 p.m. Monday, according to the Idaho Transportation Department.

ITD's Division of Aeronautics was notified of the missing plane at 10:35 p.m., and search crews in Owyhee, Twin Falls and Elmore counties were out early Tuesday morning.

Radar coordinates from where the plane was last in the air were used to locate the plane, which was found at 10:25 a.m. Tuesday.

Kenner has many regrets about the weekend trip.

"There's a lot," he said. "There's a lot of things that could have changed the outcome.