CAP: Utah Wing has a find

The National Transportation Safety Board is still investigating the reason why a small aircraft crashed on Antelope Island Tuesday morning, killing the pilot.

Kirk Babbit, a 37-year-old experienced pilot from Stansbury Park, departed from the Tooele Valley Airport in his kit-built Zodiac CH650 at approximately 8:30 a.m. en route to the Bountiful Sky Park. From there he planned to commute into Salt Lake for work by car, according to Lt. Brad Wilcox of the Davis County Sheriff’s Office.

“His family said he usually notifies his wife by e-mail when he gets to work,” Wilcox said. “But 9:30 came and went and with no e-mail.”

Family members notified authorities, who contacted the Civil Air Patrol, an all-volunteer auxiliary of the U.S. Air Force. The patrol initiated an aerial search for Babbit’s plane.

“We were tasked out at about 1 p.m. and within an hour we had two airplanes in the air — one from Ogden and one from Salt Lake,” said Lt. Sue Chamberlin, spokesperson for the Civil Air Patrol’s Utah wing.

The planes did a parallel search of the Tooele Valley, the Great Salt Lake and Antelope Island.

“Our searchers are trained to spot things from the air and they take pictures,” Chamberlin said.

At around 4 p.m., CAP searchers located what appeared to be a wreckage site in Red Rock Canyon on Antelope Island, where the terrain is rugged and mountainous.

“The crew noted a white patch on the ground on the south side of a ravine where snow had melted,” Chamberlin said.

CAP notified the Davis County Sheriff’s Office of the discovery, who then dispatched a ground search-and-rescue crew. A Department of Public Safety helicopter transported the crew to the scene, where they confirmed the wreckage to be that of Babbit’s plane.

“They hiked to the crash site, stabilized the wreckage and extricated the victim,” Wilcox said. “We believe he died on impact.”

Wilcox said the two-seater aircraft was fairly new, leading his office to believe that Babbit didn’t suffer from any mechanical problems.

Wind speeds at the Tooele Valley Airport were about 20 mph with gusts up to 35 mph on Tuesday morning — not strong enough to deter any pilot from flying, according to Steve Jackson, general aviation manager for the airport.

“Winds like that are very normal at the Tooele Valley Airport,” Jackson said. “They weren’t anything excessive.”

The exact cause of the crash will not be known until the National Transportation Safety Board completes the eight- to 10-week investigation.