Victim's smartwatch helps crews find site of fatal Montana plane crash

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Search crews were able to find a missing plane that crashed near West Yellowstone, Montana, killing all three people on board – with the help of a smartwatch belonging to one of the victims, local authorities said.

The plane left West Yellowstone airport shortly before midnight Mountain time on Thursday. Authorities received a call about a possible plane crash the following afternoon, with the “U.S. Department of Transportation Aero Division” reporting that the aircraft “could not be located,” the Gallatin County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement shared Monday on Facebook.

“Utilizing the last location of an occupants’ smart watch, two search planes were sent to search for the missing aircraft,” the sheriff’s office said. At 2:13 p.m., around half an hour after the call came in, the searchers confirmed they had found the crash site “in dense timber” just south of the town of West Yellowstone.

Search and rescue crews reached the scene and confirmed all those on board had been killed, according to the sheriff’s office. The statement named the victims as Rodney Conover, 60, and Madison Conover, 23, who both lived in Tennessee, and Kurt Enoch Robey, who was 55 and from Utah.

According to a notice from the Federal Aviation Administration, two members of crew and one passenger were on board the Piper aircraft when it crashed under unknown circumstances Thursday. It added that there was “substantial” damage.

The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the cause of the crash.

Sheriff Dan Springer “would like to extend his deepest condolences to the Conover and Robey families for their respective losses,” the statement from the sheriff’s office concluded.

The sheriff’s office did not identify the model of smartwatch used to locate the crash site, or provide any information about how the location data was accessed.

However, location data from phones and smartwatches have helped track down victims of crashes before. In one case, a North Carolina mother was able to rescue her teenage daughter, whose car had plunged into a ravine, after locating the teen via her phone’s Find My app.

Many smartwatches and phone devices are also able to alert emergency services in case of certain emergencies, including if the user has a fall.

Apple says its Crash Detection feature, available on some iPhones and Apple Watches, can be used to connect users to emergency services if the device detects a severe vehicle collision. Google Pixel phones have a similar feature.

In 2022, a couple whose car fell off a mountainside into Angeles National Forest’s Monkey Canyon in California were rescued shortly after their phone detected a crash and alerted the authorities, The Washington Post reported at the time.