A single-engine experimental plane crashed at around 8 a.m. Monday into a storage unit on Crook Avenue, near Nationway.
The crash appeared to have caused a relatively small blaze that was extinguished within about half an hour. Besides the pilot, there were no other fatalities.
The pilot of the aircraft, which federal air authorities described as an Express 2000 RG, was its sole occupant. The person, who authorities did not identify by name, has died, according to an update the Cheyenne Police Department distributed by email at around 1 p.m.
The individual was an adult male, CPD spokesperson Alex Farkas said by phone Monday afternoon. “No further injuries have been reported,” according to the police department’s news release.
The airplane had taken off from Cheyenne Regional Airport and was headed to Texas, according to National Transportation Safety Board spokesperson Jennifer Gabris. “An NTSB investigator arrived on scene this afternoon,” Gabris wrote in an email to the Wyoming Tribune Eagle.
The county coroner’s office has received the body of the pilot, Coroner Rebecca Reid said in a brief phone interview. She said that it might take a few days to get a positive identification. Once that occurs, the coroner’s office will notify that individual’s family, she told the WTE.
First responders from multiple agencies had been on the scene, authorities had said earlier Monday. By early afternoon, CPD personnel had remained there only to direct traffic, Farkas said. “We are no longer documenting what’s happening at the scene. It’s been turned over” to federal authorities, she said by phone.
Cheyenne Fire Rescue had worked to extinguish the blaze at Cheyenne Storage, 616 Crook Ave. At around the time of the crash, CFR had sent six fire engines to the location, and they were able to contain the fire at around 8:30 a.m., authorities said.
Some 30 firefighters went to the location “during the initial incident, but currently two (investigative and commander) fire personnel are here,” Andrew Dykshorn, CFR’s division chief of operations, wrote in an email to the WTE at around 2:30 p.m. “There is one storage unit that was involved in the incident.”
Initially at the time of the crash-landing, “there was a full police response to the crash, everyone who was on shift responded (10-12 officers) for traffic control and investigation,” police spokeswoman Farkas wrote to the WTE. “Some officers from the previous shift remained on the clock to cover other calls for service in town.”
Cheyenne Storage
When the plane crashed, Cheyenne Storage was closed to customers, a co-owner said by phone Monday afternoon; she would not provide her name.
As she spoke with the WTE, she said that another co-owner was speaking with a representative of the NTSB. At the time of the crash, the co-owner was at the business, although he did not see the incident, the fellow co-owner recounted.
“No one here was hurt, just the pilot,” the business owner said by phone. She said that the storage facility’s office, from where she was speaking, was not damaged.
Part of Nationway remained closed. “They were starting to clear things up” in the early afternoon, Farkas said. “Definitely sometime today, the road should be open again; hoping (for) this evening.” Residents were being asked to remain away from the area so as not to interfere with first responders.
As the CPD’s early-afternoon news release said, “the scene is still active and has now been turned over to the National [Transportation] Safety Board and Federal Aviation Administration.”
Federal investigation
Both the FAA and the NTSB “will investigate” what happened, an FAA spokesperson wrote in an email to the WTE.
“The NTSB will be in charge of the investigation and provide additional updates,” the FAA spokesperson added in his email. The NTSB has a regional office in Denver, according to the agency’s website.
In approximately 15 business days, the NTSB will release a preliminary report on the crash, spokesperson Gabris said by phone. That would be around June 15.
The initial report will contain all of the factual information that is known about the incident, Gabris said. A final report, with an analysis and suggesting a probable cause of the crash, would typically be released within a year or two, the spokeswoman estimated.
Part of the NTSB’s “investigation will be to request radar data, weather information, maintenance records and the pilot’s medical records. NTSB investigators will look at the human, machine and environment as the outline of the investigation,” Gabris wrote in her later email.
In addition to CFR, CPD and the Laramie County coroner’s office, Wyoming Air National Guard Fire, the Cheyenne-Laramie County Emergency Management Agency and the Laramie County Fire Authority were described as being among “the partnering agencies assisting with the initial investigation.”
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