A
Montana ag pilot made the unsettling discovery last month that a bullet had
pierced one of the wings of his ag plane for the second time in the past 12
months. The pilot, Rob Nicholson of Headwaters Flying Service in Three Forks,
Mont., isn’t sure when the gunshot happened, noting it could have been anytime during
the previous three months, but based on the location of the bullet hole it’s
clear he narrowly averted a potentially catastrophic outcome. The bullet that
struck the Weatherly 620B missed the fuel line by an inch and a half on the
left wing.
Coincidentally,
Nicholson discovered the new bullet hole July 18, exactly one year to the day from
when the plane had been hit twice by shots fired while he was working near
Belgrade, Mont. On July 18, 2017, bullets struck Nicholson’s left and right
wings. One of them hit 18 inches from the fuel tank. He landed safely then
without sustaining any injuries. Although Nicholson came out of this latest
shooting unscathed, the result could have been far worse. Had the bullet struck
rather than narrowly miss the left wing’s fuel line, “it could have essentially cut off all access to that fuel,”
Nicholson said. “Potentially if I had been in the wrong part of the turn when
it finally gave up the ghost—if I hadn’t been quick enough on the left and the
right tank to get the motor running again—it could have been very bad. It wasn’t,
but it could have been.”
In
addition to discovering the new bullet hole, Headwaters Flying Service turned
over a bullet casing found inside the fuselage to the FBI team investigating
last year’s shooting. Last fall the FBI
offered a $5,000 reward for information on who was responsible for the July
2017 shooting, and that case remains open. “It is still very much an
active investigation,” Nicholson informed the NAAA eNewsletter during a phone
interview. “They’ve made it very clear that this is not something they’re
willing to just drop.”
Whereas
last summer’s shooting occurred near Belgrade, Mont., Nicholson says the 2018
shooting could have happened anywhere given the size of Headwaters Flying
Service’s territory. For that reason, and because a smaller bullet was used
this time, he does not believe the 2017 and 2018 shootings are related. “We
basically have a 200-mile radius of what we’ll fly, so we have a very large
swath that it could have happened in. It potentially could have been the same
person, but I feel that would be a massive coincidence or a massively stupid
person, one or the other.”
Headwaters
Flying Service notified NAAA about last month’s shooting discovery and reported
it to the FBI but decided not to notify local authorities since the details
were so scant. “We weren’t sure when it happened, where it happened—we
literally had no details other than ‘here’s the hole,’” Nicholson explained. “It
wasn’t like we could send squad cars out to start looking or knocking on doors
asking neighbors if they heard a shot, unlike the first time around where we
did call the authorities and they were swarming the neighborhoods and going
door to door and finding stuff [out] very quickly. Within half an hour of [me] being
on the ground.”
Asked
what was going through his mind when he discovered the new bullet hole and saw
how close it was to the fuel line, Nicholson said, “It sure makes you
uncomfortable, and you wish people wouldn’t do it, but at the same time, after
flying a bit, it’s one of those things where I don’t really believe in worrying
about things that happened in the past and haven’t really affected me. But it
makes you stop and think, obviously, because this time it was an inch and a
half from the fuel line. The previous time, if the spar hadn’t caught the one
on the right wing, it very easily could have come up into the cockpit and got
me. I don’t think a lot of people are really thinking about it when they do it,
that they could actually be killing somebody, but it very could easily happen.”
Nicholson
is engaged to be married, and his fiancée happened to be within earshot when
NAAA interviewed him about his 2018 shooting incident. She summed up her
reaction in one word: “Livid.”
Nicholson
and his fiancée understand certain risks, such as working around power lines
and trees, are inherent to his job as an ag pilot, but getting shot at shouldn’t
be one they have to worry about. “This isn’t one of the ones that you typically
check on the box that, ‘Hey, we’re going to hire you, but you might get shot!’”
Nicholson said. “You just don’t really talk about that in the job interview,
but you sit down in an ag convention and you start talking to guys, and there’s
a large portion that have been shot [at] before. So, it is part of the job, but
it’s also one that shouldn’t need to be part of the job.”
Dos and Don’ts for Responding to an
Aircraft Shooting
Over
and above state laws, it is a federal crime to shoot at aircraft, including
unmanned aircraft systems. Penalties can be as severe as 20 years in prison and
a $250,000 fine. Even the threat of shooting down an aircraft can result in a
five-year prison sentence.
After a series of shootings directed at ag aircraft
last summer, including Nicholson’s incident, NAAA developed a checklist
of actions operators and pilots can take in the event someone discharges a
firearm at their aircraft. The checklist includes tips on how to report a
shooting incident and spread the word to bring the perpetrator to justice.
After
last summer’s shooting, Headwaters Flying Service followed its in-house protocols
to alert the local authorities. Headwaters has four pilots, including operator
Cody Folkvord, and before each season Folkvord and his team discuss how to
respond to different scenarios. In the year since his first shooting encounter,
Nicholson has stressed the need to have a response plan in place whenever
discussing the shooting with other ag pilots.
“You
should all know what your response is to not only this event but other types of
events that may happen,” he said. “Every year at the beginning of the year it’s
good to have a sit-down and rehash, ‘If this happens, these are the people we
communicate with. These are the people that we talk to, and these are the
people that we don’t talk to.’ Because it’s very easy just to hop on social
media to start blasting stuff off, where that’s not always the best course of
action.”
After
Nicholson’s plane was shot during flight last year, Folkvord was informed while
he was flying, and it rattled the operator to the point that it affected his
ability to operate his aircraft safely. “Since then, assuming it wasn’t a
downed pilot situation, we wouldn’t contact him,” Nicholson said. “We’d make
sure he was on the ground first before blasting out the text saying, ‘Hey, this
happened.’”
“This
time around, it wasn’t critical. The pilot was fine. We were on the ground.
We’d already alerted the appropriate authorities [at the FBI]. There was no
real reason to talk to him until we verified that he was on the ground and ‘Can
you put your brain to this?’” Nicholson said. “Depending on your operation,
it’s best to let the other pilots do their thing, and then when they’re on the
ground at the end of the day, then you can all debrief.”
NAAA’s shooting-response checklist is available here
to print out. The checklist, which Nicholson said is “much needed,” contains
the following steps along with NAAA’s advice.
Checklist
for Pilots Subjected to Discharge of a Firearm Targeting an Ag Aircraft
- Inform Local Law
Enforcement
- Contact the FBI
- Report it to the
FAA National Safety Hotline
- Call your Local
Flight Standards Office (FSO)
- File a NASA
Aviation Safety Report
- Tell Other
Pilots
- Notify Local
News Media
- Contact Your
Insurance Agent if Warranted
In addition to its shooting-response checklist, NAAA
is available to offer additional assistance in the event of an ag aircraft
shooting. Contact NAAA at (202) 546-5722 for further support.