Officials identify pilot who vanished after stopping for fuel

HELENA – Authorities Thursday released the identity of a missing pilot from South Dakota who disappeared along with his agricultural spray plane Saturday.

John P. Brandner, 39, who lists Spearfish, S.D., as his hometown in Federal Aviation Administration records, left Fort Benton on Saturday morning and stopped for fuel in Dillon en route to Boise. The single-engine airplane disappeared from radar somewhere along the Montana-Idaho border, but authorities said the plane’s emergency beacon, designed to send a signal in a crash, did not go off.

Debbie Alke with the Montana Transportation Department’s Aeronautics Division, said searchers got some additional help Thursday when a man in Idaho who had read news reports of the missing plane called authorities to report sighting it Saturday afternoon.

Alke said the man described the plane perfectly and told authorities it was flying west near Mount Borah, about 90 miles east of the Idaho-Montana border, and appeared to be flying up a narrow coulee.

Based on the report, Alke said that Montana officials suspended their search Thursday afternoon and that crews in Idaho would be concentrating their efforts in the area of the reported sighting.

“Right now, though, the weather is not great there,” she said. “It’s just tough country and … not the best flying conditions because it’s very turbulent there.”

Brandner has a commercial pilot’s rating and was scheduled to fly to Nevada to work as a contractor with the Forest Service fighting fires, Alke said.

The airplane initially was described as a C-18, but Alke said it is a M-18 Dromader.