SPOKANE — Using air bags, boats, a crane and lots of time, divers Saturday brought to shore most of the plane that crashed into the Spokane River.
The Piper Malibu crashed Thursday afternoon not long after taking off from Felts Field. Both men in the plane — Lyndon L. Amestoy, 60, and Richard Lewis Runyon, 64 — were pulled from the sunken plane about a half-hour after it crashed, but they did not survive.
Over several hours Saturday, the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office Dive Team attached the fuselage to air bags, and a boat pulled it to shore while the plane remained submerged. Once it came close to shore a crane pulled it from the water, just before 2 p.m. The boats and divers made more trips to recover other parts left in the water, including the wings.
“We recovered pretty much everything the NTSB wanted recovered,” said Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich. “There was one section of a flap that we just couldn’t find.”