Father didn’t know son going skydiving

HELENA – The father of a rising musician killed with his fiancee and three other people in the weekend crash of a skydive plane said Monday the young couple’s desire to parachute was mystifying.

“I don’t remember ever talking about it (skydiving),” said Burt Mills, whose son, Kyle Mills, died when the plane crashed and burned Saturday shortly after taking off from Marion, in northwestern Montana.

“We didn’t know they were going,” the father said, adding that skydiving intentions were not the kind of thing his son would have shared with his parents.

Mills spoke from his home in Grand Rapids, Mich., as representatives of the National Transportation Safety Board were at Skydive Big Prairie in Marion, west of Kalispell, to investigate the crash of the Cessna 182 that went down Saturday morning, killing the pilot and two skydiving instructors as well as Mills and Jennifer Sengpiel. There were no survivors.

The instructors were David Landeck Jr., of Missoula, and Joel Atkinson, of Kalispell, both 25, and the pilot was Troy Norling, 28, of Onalaska, Wis. Mills and Sengpiel were novices heading off for jumps in which they would have been attached to Landeck and Atkinson.

The plane took off from a private airstrip at about 10 a.m. and “made a big circle right after taking off,” Flathead County Sheriff Mike Meehan said.

It apparently lifted off the runway’s north end, then turned left, circled around and approached the runway from the south. It crashed nose first about 200 feet short of the runway, Meehan said.

Norling made no radio contact before the plane went down and did not relay the reason for his decision to circle back.

“The last contact he made was just before he took off,” said Deputy Bob Provo, who responded to the scene. “He said, ‘We’re going now,’ and that’s the last anyone heard.”

All the plane’s parts were found at the crash site, suggesting nothing fell off during the flight, investigators said.

It remained unclear why the plane turned around, “but it was definitely an attempt to get back on the ground,” Meehan told the Missoulian newspaper. “They never got above probably 500 feet.”

National Transportation Safety Board investigators said they and representatives from the Federal Aviation Administration likely would be finished with a preliminary report on the crash by Thursday. That report will outline the facts of the case and will be used by the NTSB in a broader investigation into what caused the crash, said Mike Fergus of the FAA.

FAA records show Sky Dive Lost Prairie owner Fred Sand received a certificate in 1985 for the single-engine plane built in 1960. Issuance of the certificate typically indicates the last time a plane was sold, and that its air worthiness was confirmed.

Calls to Sand were not returned Monday.

Mills and Sengpiel were musicians in the Great Falls Symphony, he the principal French horn player and she the principal oboist. He recently was given a position with Alberta’s Calgary Philharmonic, and she was preparing to pursue further graduate study in music. Burt Mills said his son was 31 and Sengpiel was in her 20s.

The father said early reports that his son was from Minnesota were incorrect. Before moving to Montana he had lived in Michigan and several other states, graduating from high school in Texas and college in Indiana, followed by graduate school in New York, Burt Mills said.

Kyle Mills listed his summer address as Grand Rapids, Mich., and Sengpiel originally was from Richfield, Wis., but listed her summer address as Jackson, Wis., said Carolyn Valacich, executive director of the Great Falls Symphony.