Hi,
I'm a newspaper reporter with the San Jose Mercury News. I've been reporting on the Aug. 19 crash of a plane in Madras, Oregon near the small airport there. A man from our area flew by himself to Oregon, reportedly to catch the total eclipse.
Apparently, this airport there near where he crashed was so small they had to bring in a mobile air traffic control tower for the days around the eclipse because there were some 400 flights in one day at this tiny strip.
So, I wanted to see if anyone has pulled radio traffic from this incident? I'm by no means an aviation expert, so have struggled to find out how to pull the radio traffic from this incident which happened about 2 p.m. Oregon time that day. The press release said 911 dispatchers were notified of the crash at 1:54 p.m. local time that day, so crash would've happened shortly before that.
I would of course be curious of the radio traffic of this crash, but I'm also curious if there was other traffic around that time from this small air strip. Basically, I'm curious if the increased traffic at this small airport over short amount of time might have played a role in this tragedy. There was another report saying that it was so busy, the airport gave each plane a 3-4 minute window to land.
Here's an article about the crash:
http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/08/19/plane-from-bay-area-crashes-near-popular-oregon-solar-eclipse-viewing-spot/Thanks for any help you can provide. I can be reached at mgafni@bayareanewsgroup.com
Best,
Matthias