Last week, a single-engine 1957 DeHavilland DHC-3T carrying former Alaska state Senator Ted Stevens crashed into a remote Alaska mountainside, killing the Senator and four others while stranding the remaining survivors on brush-and-rock-covered slopes overnight. Apparently the plane was flying by visual flight rules and was not required to file a flight plan. According to the National Weather Service, weather conditions deteriorated between 1 pm and 2 pm around the time the plane took off while visibility at the nearest observation area (Dillingham) was about 10 miles with overcast skies at 1:49 pm and had dropped to 3 miles by 2:22 pm (along with light rain, fog and mist).
The AP has noted that plane crashes in Alaska are are more common than in other parts of the world due to often treacherous weather and mountainous terrain plus many parts of the state and around 80% of Alaskan communities are not accessible by ground transportation. In fact former Senator Stevens, a decorated World War II pilot who was the longest-serving GOP senator in history, was one of only two survivors in a 1978 plane crash at Anchorage International Airport that killed his wife and several others. Moreover and in 1972, Nick Begich, Alaska’s only congressman, was presumably killed when his plane disappeared over Alaska with then-House Majority Leader Hale Boggs of Louisiana. That accident led to the mandating of Emergency Locator Transmitters in all US civil aircraft.
However, an article (“Who’s the mama grizzly now? National media goes bushwhacking in Alaska”) the Alaskan Dispatch (which is providing extensive coverage of the accident) has a different take on the accident noting that:
If you believe the national media, Alaska bush pilots are flamboyant cowboys of the sky, Prince William Sound is still covered in crude from the Exxon Valdez oil spill, and it’s a bad idea to keep Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport named after a guy who died in a plane crash.
Meanwhile, another Alaskan Dispatch article (“How safe is it to fly in rural Alaska?”) noted that pilots who daily crisscross the Alaskan wilderness say that travel by air in Alaska is getting safer. However, the article also noted that:
Former Alaska State Parks Director Jerry Lewanski, who spent years as a Chugach State Park ranger studying accidents, once observed that true accidents are the rarest of events. Usually, he said, when you deconstruct events, you find one of the elements leading up to a death or serious injury is something that interferes with judgment.
Emotional stress, he said, can often be one of those things — only if it even slows the reaction time of people when some thing else goes wrong. "It still comes down to pilot decision-making," said Miller.
Very good points worth noting – even if you do not fly in a somewhat treacherous place like Alaska.
Related posts:
