Pilot of tanker plane that crashed near Oregon's Falls Fire ID'd

The pilot of a single-engine air tanker that crashed Thursday near eastern Oregon’s 142,000-acre Falls Fire was identified Sunday as James Bailey Maxwell, 74.

On Sunday, the U.S. Forest Service described Maxwell in a statement as “an experienced pilot who had spent 54 years of his life flying and who had logged approximately 24,000 hours of flight time.”

“The wildland firefighting community is mourning the loss of one of their own,” the service said.

An official Facebook page for the Falls Fire said the plane was BLM-contracted, referring to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, and that it had been assigned to help with the firefighting response to the Falls Fire.

The Federal Aviation Administration was investigating the cause of the crash.

Maxwell is survived by family in Idaho, Oregon and Washington, the forest service said.

The plane went down near Seneca, Oregon, shortly after 1 p.m. Thursday with only the pilot aboard, according to the National Transportation Safety Board. The NTSB said in a statement that someone reported an autopilot issue on the aircraft before it collided with the terrain below.

Search efforts were launched in the area, and the plane, along with the pilot’s remains, were found, a U.S. Bureau of Land Management spokesperson said Friday.

The NTSB described the aircraft as an Air Tractor AT-802A. In a statement, the forest service said the aircraft is the smallest in Oregon’s fleet of firefighting tankers and can maneuver into hard-to-reach areas to drop its capacity of 800 gallons of water or suppressant.

The Falls Fire, which is 57% contained, has burned more than 142,000 acres since its start by human hands on July 10, federal incident management officials said in a daily statement on Sunday. It was one of dozens of wildfires burning in the West.

The National Interagency Fire Center said 56 wildfires were burning without containment on Sunday in the nation’s Northwest.