WPR26LA020 · Piper PA-23-250
Blue Wave Air Piper PA-23-250 · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route
From Billings Logan International Airport (BIL) to Polson Airport (8S1)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR26LA020
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Ongoing
- API-reported fatalities
- 3 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-23-250
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-23
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N2345R
- Operator
- Blue Wave Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Billings Logan International Airport (BIL), Billings, MTTo Polson Airport (8S1), Polson, MT
- Aircraft age
- About 44 years (built 1981)
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- En route
- Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Loss of engine power (partial)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On October 17, 2025, about 1615 mountain daylight time, a Piper PA-23-250, N2345R, was substantially damaged when it was involved in an accident near Condon, Montana. The pilot and two passengers were fatally injured. The airplane was operated as a Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 personal flight. According to a report of preliminary air traffic control (ATC) services, at 1541, the pilot requested a climb to 14,000 ft mean sea level (msl) due to concerns about icing and was also advised of icing in the mid-teens by the controller. The pilot subsequently requested vectors toward lower terrain and then informed the controller that he was unable to maintain altitude before he declared an emergency, citing icing and an issue with the left engine. Salt Lake Center (ZLC) lost radar contact with the airplane at 1615. An airplane in the area attempted to relay communications to the accident airplane, but was unsuccessful. Another airplane advised ZLC that they were able to identify the accident airplane at 4,300 ft msl on ADS-B, northeast of Goat Mountain. Family members notified the Federal Aviation Administration when the flight did not arrive at its destination airport and an Alert Notice (ALNOT) was subsequently issued at 1629.
Figure 1: ADS-B Flight track of the accident airplane’s final moments Search and Rescue aircraft were deployed from Malmstrom Air Force Base, along with members of the Missoula County Search and Rescue, Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, and the Powell County Sheriff's Office. The accident site was located on October 18, 2025 in mountainous terrain at an elevation of 5,286 ft msl near Youngs Creek within the Bob Marshall Wilderness. The airplane was recovered to a secure facility for further examination.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR26LA020
- Event ID
- 20251020201889
- Case number
- WPR26LA020
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: e9d0d0652dabd5da8fde26dc4c823974089fa98df7d5626e7518c247bb320659; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:10:19.533Z.