BURLINGTON — The three Havre, Mont., residents killed in a fiery plane crash five miles west of here were the owner of an oil and gas exploration company and two of his employees, family members said.
Killed in Thursday’s crash were pilot John O. Brown, 60, and passengers Randall McPherson, 59, and Christopher Schafer, 25.
Brown owned J. Burns Brown Operating Co. and subsidiaries Santana Inc. and Textana Inc., to which the A-36 Beechcraft Bonanza was registered. McPherson and Schafer were landmen, meaning they obtained leases from mineral-rights owners.
“Right now is more a time of praying and grieving for us,” said Emily Brown, John Brown’s daughter-in-law, in requesting privacy for the families.
The plane had flown from Havre and was on its second landing approach to the Skagit Regional Airport, about 40 miles north of Everett, when it dropped off the radar at 11 a.m. Thursday, investigators said.
Officials at the airport contacted other airports in the area, assuming the pilot had decided to try another airstrip, as small planes sometimes do, and tried to contact the pilot on his cellular telephone, Kurt Anderson, a National Transportation Safety Board investigator, told the Skagit Valley Herald of Mount Vernon.
When that failed, a search began and wreckage was spotted by a sheriff’s helicopter about 1 p.m. in a wooded area near Bay View State Park. The plane was mostly consumed by flames, the sheriff’s office said.
“They were going fishing and were going to be landing in the Seattle area,” Jana Sand, a family friend of one of the dead men, told The Havre Daily News.
“It was usual for the Browns to take the plane and go on trips like this, but Chris was one of the young guys and it wasn’t usual for him to get invited,” Sand said. “Chris was a newlywed. He and his wife, Liz, just got married on July 28.”
The cause of the crash has not been determined.
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