BOZEMAN – A small airplane piloted by an aircraft mechanic from Utah crashed in a barley field west of Bozeman on Monday as clouds and heavy rain moved into the area, killing the pilot, officials said.
Jarrod Dearden, 34, of Ogden, Utah, died at the crash site just 10 miles from his destination, Bozeman’s Gallatin Field Airport, Gallatin County sheriff’s officials said. Nobody else was on board the single-engine Cessna 182.
Dearden was a mechanic from Ogden, Utah, who had borrowed the plane from his employer and was headed from Ogden to Bozeman to work on a friend’s aircraft, said Sean Reid, the Salt Lake City-based owner of the plane that crashed.
Reid said Dearden was a friend and the director of maintenance of Reid’s helicopter company for the past three years.
Dearden was a very thorough mechanic who also worked on the plane that crashed. He was an experienced pilot, Reid said.
“We have no idea what happened to the plane,” Reid told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. “He was very safety conscious. That’s why I can’t figure out what happened.”
The plane passed its annual inspection last month, Reid said.
The Cessna crashed after 8 a.m., Gallatin County sheriff’s officials said. The cause of the crash is under investigation.
Just before 8 a.m., visibility was 10 miles and the wind was blowing at five knots at the Bozeman airport, said meteorologist Michael Mercer of the National Weather Service in Great Falls.
But within a half-hour, heavy rain was reported and visibility had shrunk to a mile, Mercer said.
An FAA investigator arrived Monday afternoon. An investigator from the National Transportation Safety Board was also headed to Bozeman from California and was expected to be at the site by Monday night, sheriff’s officials said.