All 10 aboard crashed plane have been found

The bodies of all ten people from the Snohomish area who were on a plane that crashed while returning from a skydiving event in Boise have been found.

Searchers found seven bodies late Monday with the wreckage of the plane in mountainous, heavily wooded terrain about 2 ½ miles from the Yakima County-Lewis County line near White Pass.

The final three were located today at about 1 p.m., said Nisha Marvel, spokeswoman for the state Department of Transportation's aviation division.

The plane had been reported missing Sunday night on a flight from Star, Idaho, to Shelton, Mason County.

Yakima County Sheriff Ken Irwin said at a news conference today that there are no survivors, and search-and-rescue crews would be removing the bodies from the crash site over the next few days.

The plane, carrying nine skydivers and a pilot, disappeared from radar screens Sunday night about two-thirds of the way to its destination. The area where the Cessna 208 Grand Caravan was found had been the focus of an extensive air and ground search that began Monday morning and stretched into the evening.

The crash area is about 100 feet by 60 feet, leading officials to believe the plane went into the ground straight down, said Irwin. Irwin said the plane was traveling at about 70 mph when it crashed into the Cascade Mountains at 4,300 feet elevation.

Identities of those aboard had not been officially released. The families of the crash victims have been notified, said Jim Hall, director of Yakima Valley Emergency Management.

Family members confirmed today that the pilot was Phil Kibler, 46. Kibler was a 10-year aviation veteran, said his brother, Bill Kibler, and was planning to return to the East Coast to visitfamily after making this final flight with friends and acquaintances.

One of the passengers was Landon Atkin, 20, of Snohomish, according to Rick Mangan, a skydiving instructor with Blue Skies in Bremerton.

Mangan met Atkin earlier this year and worked with him as an instructor for a brief time before the weather went foul in August, he said. "He wanted me to do some coaching with him and teach him some of the techniques of a different style of skydiving," Mangan said. "He's a very nice guy."

Atkin was a parachute packer in Snohomish, Mangan said.

Atkin's family declined to comment.

Casey Craig's family told reporters that the 30-year-old from Bothell was on the flight. Kelly Craig, his older brother, who first took him skydiving, said it's unlikely the skydivers would have been prepared to jump during the cross-state flight.

"I want to make sure people know he didn't die skydiving, it was a plane crash," said his mother Wanda Craig. "There are people who think they could have jumped while the plane was going down. That's just not possible."

Michelle Barker, a 21-year-old from Kirkland who was on the plane, was described as fiercely independent and "her own person," by her stepfather, Rich Williams of Boise. Barker took her first dive when she was 18, and had been on 50 jumps since.

Williams said he arrived at the search site last night — just in time to that the wreckage had been found.

"And now we just have to get our kids off the mountain," he said.

Also on the plane was Hollie Rasberry from Bellingham. "She was never scared, she was always a trouper," a friend said.

The smell of fuel led searchers to the wreckage about 7:40 p.m. Monday, but they found only the front section of the plane, the Yakima County Sheriff's Office said. The tail section had detached and had not been found Tuesday morning.

Officials used the serial number to confirm that it was the skydivers' plane.

The National Transportation Safety Board has sent a Washington, D.C.-based investigator, Howard Plagens, to Yakima, a spokesman said. He is expected to arrive tonight.

Earlier Monday, members of the skydiving community used cellphones, online message boards and social-networking sites such as MySpace to try to determine who was on the plane. "It's agonizing," said Kandace Harvey, president of Harvey Field, while she waited for word. The Snohomish airport was the nine skydivers' main drop zone.

"We're hoping and praying for a miracle," she said before the wreckage was found. "They're our friends, they're our family. And we all need to know they're OK."

The aircraft is owned by Kapowsin Air Sports in Shelton, said Jessie Farrington, the company's owner. Farrington said she rented the plane to the pilot and skydivers Friday for an event in Idaho. She said the team made a quick jump in Shelton on Friday before heading out.

The plane was due back at Shelton's Sanderson Field by 7:30 p.m. Sunday. When Farrington and her husband hadn't heard from them by 10:30, they called authorities.

Farrington described the pilot as experienced in flying skydiving trips.

The plane, a "stretch" version of Cessna's popular Caravan model, has been the subject of directives from the Federal Aviation Administration and the Transportation Safety Board of Canada warning against operating in icy conditions. Since 1990, 20 crashes of the plane worldwide have been linked to icing. Problems have resulted from inexperienced pilots trying to fly the craft in poor weather, according to the two agencies.

Overnight temperatures in the White Pass area Sunday night ranged from the upper 20s to the low 30s, said meteorologist Allen Kam of the National Weather Service in Seattle. At about 7 p.m. Sunday, wind gusts reached 45 knots and humidity contributed to cloudy conditions, he said.

Yakima County Search and Rescue officials said a hunter reported hearing a small plane with engine trouble about 8 p.m. Sunday and heard what might have been a crash southwest of Rimrock Lake. Using the hunter's account and radar information, searchers Monday scoured an area southwest of Rimrock Lake.

Searchers had been unable to pick up any emergency signal from the aircraft, according to state Department of Transportation officials.

The skydivers were on their way back from a skydiving "boogie" — a sort of festival, or gathering of skydivers — near Boise, Mangan said.

Elaine Harvey, co-owner of Skydive Snohomish, said nine of the 10 aboard were either employees of her business or local, licensed skydivers. Skydive Snohomish operates a training school and offers skydiving flights at Harvey Field.

The nighttime return flight to Shelton's Sanderson Field wasn't a jump run, but the skydivers would have had their parachutes nearby in the plane, Mangan said. Before the bodies were found, he and others in the community had been hoping that some of the skydivers might have parachuted safely from the plane before it went down.

"If I was on a jump plane that was having engine trouble, rather than risk a landing in the mountains, I would have gotten out of the plane," he said.

It's not unheard-of for skydivers to bail out of a plane before it hits the ground.

On Aug. 21, 1983, nine skydivers and two pilots were killed in the crash of a Lockheed L-18 Learstar near Silvana in Snohomish County. Fifteen skydivers successfully parachuted from the plane before it crashed in a field.

The plane had taken off from the Arlington Airport a short time earlier.

Mike Metcalf, of Kent, was among those who jumped from the plane and survived. He said news of Monday's crash transported him back.

"The first thing that went through my mind was a visual of the airplane going upside down in 1983. The first six months after that crash, every night I would wake up with that mental video playing in my mind — watching it from the time it went over to the time it impacted the ground," he said. "You learn to live with it."

That day, he lost several close friends, bonded by the shared love of skydiving, he said. "We all went through some real tough months and years afterward. We don't think so much about the accident itself but about the friends we lost," he said.

During the day Monday, more than two dozen friends and family members gathered at the White Pass ski area lodge. Too distraught to talk to reporters, most families requested that questions be handled by Red Cross staff.

"It's not easy for anybody. Even though we're not related to them, you can relate pretty quickly," said Red Cross spokeswoman Stephanie Kinney, whose eyes teared up when she noted that her 18-year-old son is about the same age as many of those believed to be on the plane.

Ryan Shipley, 32, was among the skydivers who dropped by Harvey Field Monday looking for news about the crash, which he assumed involved some of his friends.

"It's a tightknit community," said Shipley, of Lake Stevens. "Skydiving is a language not a lot of people speak. If you find someone who speaks that language, it's an instant bond."

Shipley said that under different circumstances he might have been on that plane.

"The past five boogies they've gone on, I've probably been on four of them," he said.

Seattle Times staff reporters Craig Welch, Christopher Schwarzen, Jennifer Sullivan and Warren Cornwall and news researchers Gene Balk and Miyoko Wolf contributed to this report. Information from the Yakima Herald-Republic and The Associated Press also is included.