Courtesy Katie Clemens
An Air Tractor firefighting plane sits on the field at the private Flying Y Airport in Paradise Valley on August 20, 2013. Its pilot, Mike Hanneman of Texas-based GB Aerial, was formed to make an emergency landing there on August 16.
In aviation, many rules and warnings are created because someone died. On Friday, some of those rules helped a pilot walk away from an emergency landing.
Pilot Mike Hanneman first became aware of an engine problem when he realized that the smoke he saw out his window was not coming from the North Eightmile fire burning in the forest below.
Hanneman, owner of GB Aerial out of Texas, had taken off from West Yellowstone in his single-engine Air Tractor less than an hour earlier and was just setting up to make a fire retardant drop. Air Tractors are best known for crop dusting and can carry 650 pounds of retardant.
His partner, flying a similar airplane, had already made the first drop, and Hanneman craned over his left shoulder to see the drop point.
“Then I saw smoke. Needless to say, that shouldn't happen. It got my attention,” Hanneman said. “I turned around to figure out what the problem was, and the instruments were going crazy.”
Hanneman broke off his retardant run. Smoke and flames belched from the exhaust pipes by the propeller.
He tried a couple of emergency procedures. The engine continued losing power.
He radioed that he had a problem.
Hanneman turned toward the flattest ground he could see, which turned out to be the Paradise Valley. By regulation, he had been flying at 9,500 feet, but he was slowly losing altitude.
Seeing no houses below, he ejected his load of retardant.
His GPS showed an airport about 12 miles away just off his nose.
“My partner Scott took over the radios and said I should go to Livingston, but I wouldn't make it to Livingston,” Hanneman said. “So we headed for this airport. But it was difficult to see. We flew over it before Scott was able to see it. He did a low pass to check it out.”
That airport was the Flying Y Airport, a private gravel strip near Emigrant belonging to Martin and Katie Clemens. They heard the first airplane fly by but didn't think too much of it.
Meanwhile, Hanneman had arrived over the field with 1,200 feet to spare.
After his wingman told him the field was good, Hanneman flew a 360-degree turn to allow some of his altitude to bleed off. Then he flew to a normal landing and was able to taxi clear of the runway.
“I read the hangar, which said, ‘Paradise Flying,'” Hanneman said. “I couldn't agree more.”
Because it's a private airport, Katie said they initially wondered why a plane was taxiing up.
“He landed with just 25 percent of his power,” Katie said. “He said it was a good thing we were here or he would have had to find a field.”
It's not the first time wildfire-related aircraft have been there; it has been used as a helipad to fight previous fires.
It was Hanneman's first serious malfunction in his nine years of wildfire suppression. He is also a mechanic and said it was hard to tell what had gone wrong with the engine.
He'll spend the next two days installing a new engine, so he's thankful for the Clemens family's hospitality.
“I rolled up and these people have been extremely kind. They've let us have access to everything,” Hanneman said.
Hanneman praised the training and flying policies that the U.S. Forest Service uses to keep pilots safe.
He said he hadn't even shut down the engine before his cellphone rang. The ground personnel in West Yellowstone had heard of his trouble and were checking that he was alive.
It wasn't long after that other Forest Service employees drove up to the airfield.
“Everything turned out OK,” Hanneman said. “But it's nice to know that if it hadn't – if I'd come down in a field somewhere - the system is quick enough that they would have been there.”
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