A Tale of Two Tails . . . One up, One Down

As many of you know with my work I travel all over the State of Alaska visiting many of the rural bush villages where we build clinics, water and wastewater treatment plants, large water tanks and lagoons for treating sewage.

It is very fulfilling work seeing the differences made in people’s lives who may have never had indoor plumbing to bathe, wash clothes, or even brush your teeth with suddenly have these conveniences many of us take for granted.

With the travel come many different forms of transportation.  I have flown in all kinds of airplanes, snow machine, 4-wheel all terrain vehicles and even on a dog sled.  The weather conditions are often ever changing even within an eight to twenty four hour period.

A few weeks ago I posted about several of my recent trips, one to Selawik and the other to Old Harbor where I have projects going.

The trip to Old Harbor has two flights on Alaska Air Lines between Anchorage and the City of Kodiak.  They are Boeing 737 jets where we switch to smaller aircraft or what I jokingly refer to as “puddle jumpers” since much of bush Alaska is covered with millions of small lakes or ‘puddles’ as seen from the air.

The flight to and from Old Harbor out of Kodiak we fly with Servant Air who have several different aircraft but the one we have taken more often is an Islander. 

It is an older airplane and researching its serial number I found out it was the 4^th airplane off the assembly line of Britten-Norman BN-2 Islander’s built in 1967.

Most of these flights I have sat up front in the copilot seat with the pilot Jason who lives in Kodiak.  He has been flying these skies around the Island for several years and has a pretty good feel for the sometimes weird and wild conditions found in Alaska on any given day.  My one gut observation of his flying style is his speed control as he sometimes makes his departure and approaches in and out of Kodiak airport.  There is usually a lot of wind and the mountainous terrain surrounding the airport adds to the turbulence around the airport.

Just before leaving the office yesterday I was checking on the leader’s status of the Iditarod when I noticed an entry for a developing story in the Anchorage Daily News.  There had been a crash in Kodiak earlier that afternoon during a takeoff from the Kodiak airport.

Oddly my first thought was wondering whose plane had went down and of the crash victims.  All that was initially reported was a plane had taken off with three people onboard and the plane clipped trees just past the end of the runway and had gone done in a group of trees.

I returned home and waited for the six pm news to come on and found out the plane that went down belonged to Servant Air and as soon as I saw the picture of the plane I knew it was the Islander we have flown in many times.  There it was hanging from the trees pointing nose down.  Once the list of names was given it was Jason flying with two people from Old Harbor making the afternoon flight home.

The report said during windy conditions the plane had taken off was climbing out and just past the edge of the airport crossed the road and clipped trees and plunged vertically toward the ground.  The thick forest and tree limbs broke the plane’s fall toward the ground and it ended up saving everyone’s life with only a broken arm to one of the passengers.  It took rescuers several hours to get everyone out of the plane due to its instability so a crane was brought in to lower the plane and stabilize it while everyone was extricated from the wreckage.  

This is a tale of two tails where one was sitting upright in its normal position getting ready for takeoff.  The other tail is hanging in the trees not in a natural position for an airplane that has served tirelessly for so many years without any damage or incident.  A plane that has carried people, cargo, and medical supplies to villages all over Alaska in weather sometimes frightful by most standards.  

It is not a fitting end for Pegasus who gave so much to be crane lifted out of the trees.  Time will tell whether this Humpty Dumpty can be put back together again and returned to service.

There are inherent dangers in any profession and the risk/reward is many times not measured in the paycheck but by the impact to other lives you encounter along a journey through a life time of service to others.

It may not be in the political or religious sense that many believe ‘service’ entails but by the simple acts of kindness to others.

I’m not sure what aircraft I will be making trips to Old Harbor shortly but it would seem like my odds of success have increased by Servant’s latest attempt at flight.  Over the weekend I watched an old movie called “Winds of Kitty Hawk” about Orville and Wilbur Wright’s first flights and the learning process of early flight in America.  It was inspiring to watch and being in aviation for most of my life reminds one of the realities of defying gravity.  One I am still happy to do any chance I get.

Ice