just a thought - maybe the feds wanted to inspect the woods where the Q400 crashed, but didn't want to tip off the estate owners by going through the normal process to get a search warrant.
Having a plane crash there is an excellent excuse to see what is going on there.
sounds plausible to me, though I don't know what kind of system in a Dash-8 allows a pilot to bail out.
this could have happened even without a pilot. They just needed a reason to have feds on the grounds. Maybe this place was similar to the Black Forest area near the Rots' mansion.