Colorado firefighting pilot killed in crop dusting crash

A crop dusting plane which crashed Thursday near Brush was piloted by the owner of a fleet of the planes which has supported wildfire firefighting efforts in Colorado and across the western United States.

Kyle Scott, 52, was killed in the crash.

The plane was conducting aerial spraying at the time, according to a preliminary accident report from the Federal Aviation Administration.

Scott co-owned the aerial spraying business (Scott Aviation) and had been operating in northern Colorado for 15 years, according to his business profile . He was a current board member of the National Agricultural Aviation Association (NAAA), Vice-president of the Colorado Agricultural Aviation Association, and an operations manager at the Fort Morgan Municipal Airport.

Scott also owned nine such crop dusters, known as Air Tractors, which had been converted to wildfire air tankers. The single-engine air tankers (SEATs) have responded to wildfires in Oregon, Washington, California, Nevada, and Colorado, according to an online article published by Aerial Firefighting Magazine. That outlet also stated the Scott was president of the SEAT Operators Association.

"We called on Kyle a couple times when we needed help with wildfires and he was more than happy to give back to the community who had welcomed he and his little family to," Jim Crone, a friend of Scott and a former paramedic for Denver and Morgan County ambulance services, wrote in a social media post. "It was awesome to have those resources in your backyard.

"It was awesome watching he and his guys spraying fields. They are damn good at what they do, not a bunch of risk-taking cowboys."

Scott had 27 years of aviation experience and was certified to fly single- and multi-engine aircraft as well as helicopters, per his profile.

Scott's agricultural sprayer went down at approximately 10:15 a.m. near the towns of Hillrose and Snyder, northeast of Brush. Scott was found deceased at the scene by deputies from the Morgan County Sheriff's Office. The circumstances of the crash are not known. The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board are both investigating the crash.

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Another Colorado Fire Aviation pilot, Marc Thor Olson , died in a 2021 crash. Olson was performing nighttime flights at the Kruger Rock Fire immediately southeast of Estes Park.

"I know Kyle was devastated when one of his Co-Fire pilots, Thor, was killed flying a fire in Larimer County a few years ago," Crone added. "Yesterday, his number came up. Like any of us who do risky stuff for the good of mankind, we know its only a matter of time 'when' something bad happens, not if. Buddy it was your time. ... Ya done good."