Sierra Pacific Airlines - SPA

De Havilland DHC-6 Twin Otter

About 1100 mst, on February 15,1983, a Sierra Pacific Airlines DHC-6, operating as Transwestern Flight 868, crashed during its final approach to a landing on runway 31, 1.7 mile south of the Friedman Memorial Airport at Hailey, Idaho. Flight 868 was a regularly scheduled commuter passenger flight between Boise and Hailey, Idaho. There were two flightcrew members and six passengers on board the flight. One passenger escaped with minor injuries, but all the other occupants sustained serious injuries in the accident. There was no fire. About 800 feet above the small town of Bellevue, 2 miles south of the airport, the captain reduced power in order to configure the airplane for its final approach. Immediately afterward, the captain realized that he had lost eleva control of the airplane. The airplane nosed over and descended steeply. The captain attempted to control the pitch of the airplane by adding power; it began to recover but it crash landed on a highway in a slight nosedown attitude, with the right wing slightly down The airplane then veered off the highway, struck a 4-foot-high snowbank, and broke apart.

Convair CV-440 Metropolitan

The aircraft was chartered by Wolper Productions Inc. to fly a movie production crew from Bishop (BIH) to Burbank (BUR). The cast and crew of the television series 'Primal Man' was returning from shooting a prehistoric hunting sequence in the snow-covered Sierra. Amongst the crew were director-writer Dennis Azzarella and actor Janos Prohaska. Flight 802 departed Hollywood-Burbank Airport at 18:14 to pick up the passengers at Bishop. The flight from Burbank to Bishop was conducted under VFR conditions and at 19:10 the crew contacted the Tonopah Flight Service Station (FSS) and cancelled their VFR flight plan. The crew then "air filed" an IFR flight plan for the return trip from Bishop to Burbank. The aircraft landed at Bishop at 19:20. Baggage and equipment were loaded and 32 passengers boarded the flight. The Convair CV-440 departed the gate at about 20:20. The crew then contacted the Tonopah FSS and advised that they were taxiing for departure and requested that their IFR clearance be activated. After takeoff from runway 12 the flight made a climbing right turn, circled back over, or near, the BIH VOR and then proceeded outbound in an east-southeasterly direction. At 20:24 Flight 802 again contacted the Tonopah FSS and reported that they were off Bishop at 20:20 and were, "climbing VFR over Bishop, awaiting clearance." About four minutes later the aircraft struck a foothill in the White Mountain range at an elevation of 6,100 feet. The aircraft was on a heading of about 175° magnetic and in an approximate 25° bank to the right at impact. All 36 occupants were killed.