Cropduster crashes on Airbase Road

This crop duster crashed trying to land on Airbase Road last week. No one was injured.

A crop duster crashed on Airbase Road, about a mile short of the municipal airport runway, after the pilot ran out of fuel last Friday morning.

No one was injured in the incident, even though cars on the road scattered to get out of the way of the plane, and the aircraft struck an Idaho Concrete truck in the rear before sliding off into the barrow pit in front of the Classic Auto Body shop on Airbase Road.

One driver said he was driving into town when the plane suddenly came down right over the top of his sedan and landed in front of him.

The driver of the Idaho Concrete Co. gravel truck, Jack Grinnell, looked in his rear-view mirror and saw the plane trying to make an emergency the landing on the highway, and swerved to one side of the road to give it room.

The plane's wing clipped the rear of his truck, the right wheel assembly on the plane collapsed, dipping its nose into the ground, and the plane slid off the road, severely damaging its propeller. The pilot walked away from the crash.

Damage to the plane, owned by Bybee Air Service and flown by Benjamin Niswander of Portage, Mich., was estimated at about $5,000. There was no significant damage to the truck it hit.

Sheriff's authorities investigating the accident said Niswander told them he had just landed to reload with insecticide and was heading back to finish a field in the Grand View area when he noticed he was low on fuel. He turned around and tried to make it back to the Mountain Home Municipal Airport but ran out of fuel short of the runway and tried to land in the center strip of the five-lane highway.

"If it had been a little bit earlier in the day," said Detective Mike Barclay of the Elmore County Sheriff's office, "when all that traffic is going to the base, this could have been catastrophic." The accident occurred just before 8 a.m.

Officials of the Federal Aviation Administration were on the scene in minutes. The FAA had previously grounded one of the Bybee Air Service aircraft and were on their way to inspect it at the municipal airport when the crash occurred.

Some insecticide spilled onto the roadway, but it was eventually determined that it was a biodegradable type that was not harmful to humans and was washed off the road by the local fire department.

Both the FAA and the National Transportation and Safety Board are investigating the incident.