What all Pilots Can Learn from Alaska Plane Crash Rescue

It’s the worst kind of rescue one can imagine—one where the weather is so bad the rescuers crash and need rescuing. You’ll find the details in a well-written, 3-part feature story by Craig Medred in the Alaska Dispatch about a little reported plane crash last summer. The story is as compelling as a novel, but is virtually unknown because it was shadowed by a plane crash that killed Senator Ted Stevens the following day. Buried in the story are lessons that all pilots should heed.

In part I, we learn that 49-year-old Wasilla pilot Don Erbey was...

doing a favor: taking 4 of his friend’s Texas relatives on a sightseeing tour of the nearby Chugach Mountains. Since his own Cessna 170 had too few seats, he borrowed his father’s six-seat Cherokee Six. But when his father’s plane was cleaned, the survival gear was removed. Did Erbey notice the omission? The article doesn’t tell us. If he did notice the survival gear was missing, it would have been easy to rationalize flying without it. After all, it was a quick sightseeing flight in an area very familiar to the pilot. The takeaway for all pilots is to do things the right way every time, even when it’s inconvenient, and never rationalize away following appropriate procedures.

According to the article, “The quick trip he planned was a pretty standard flight and the weather looked fine.” But weather moved in quickly and the pilot became engulfed in clouds. In Erbey’s words, “Those clouds moved a whole hell of a lot faster than I could climb up there (at 8,000 feet). I knew I was in a bad situation." 

It sounds like the pilot tried to out climb the clouds he was approaching, but was unable to do so. That makes one wonder why the pilot didn’t make a U-turn when he saw approaching clouds that he couldn’t out climb. Certainly it’s possible that he did make a U-turn and became trapped by surrounding clouds. Weather can change fast, especially in Alaska, so it’s possible the pilot had no possible means of escaping his situation. But the takeaway for pilots is clear: If there’s bad weather ahead, turn back to the good weather that you’ve just come from.

Knowing he was in a five-mile-wide basin surrounded by higher mountains, the pilot decided “to make a broad, flat turn above the relatively gentle surface of the snow-covered glacier, and then ease the plane back down slope until he hopefully found clear air or eased into a crash landing. As the turn began, and the plane lost altitude, he worried most about catching a wing tip and cartwheeling the plane into a deadly crash.” When the plane hit the glacier he was shocked; he hadn’t seen anything before touchdown. 

Although the engine was ripped from its mounts, the fuselage remained intact, providing shelter from a storm with winds that raged up to 50 mph. But the pilot and his passengers were now trapped at 8,500 feet on a glacier in a storm with no food or water. Worse, no one was appropriately dressed. The Texans wore light jackets and the pilot, accustomed to the cooler Alaskan temperatures, wore only a short-sleeve shirt and a fleece vest. 

An important takeaway for all pilots is to dress appropriate to the terrain they’ll be flying over—not just for the temperatures at their departure and destination airports. When I teach mountain flying over the Sierra Mountains, I always bring along my snow boots even on the nicest days. When asked, I tell my clients—who are usually younger than me—that the boots are to keep the older pilot warm while the younger pilot hikes out for help! They always get the point. Of course my comment about hiking for help is always in jest; plane crash survivors are more likely to be found if they stay with the wreckage instead of wandering off seeking help.

Once on the glacier, the pilot made the right moves. He determined that the emergency locator transmitter (ELT) had not activated upon impact, so he turned it on manually. He also was able to reach a pilot overhead and radio that everyone had survived the crash.

The most compelling part of the story is the difficulty that the Alaska National Guard had in reaching the crash site and extracting the survivors. The pararescuemen, or PJs, originally thought they could fly to the crash site in a Pavehawk helicopter and pick up the survivors. But the weather was so bad, they couldn’t find a hole in the clouds to reach the downed aircraft. They then flew back to their base, reequipped with sleds and other equipment for a ground rescue, and were dropped off about 4 miles away and 2,500 below the crash site.

In the fierce storm, progress was so slow it took nearly 24 hours to reach the crash. And once they were at the GPS coordinates for the downed aircraft, visibility was so poor they couldn’t find the aircraft. The PJs split into two teams to find the aircraft and eventually one team found it. Contact was lost with the second team, which spent a second night on the mountain before finding the plane. During the course of the rescue, resources were diverted to the crash killing Senator Ted Stevens. 

Later, the first helicopter to reach the scene crashed, increasing the number of people now trapped on the glacier. You can read the full story of this literal cliffhanger here: Part I, Part II, Part III. Feel free to post a comment below with the conclusions you draw from this amazing crash and rescue story. 

Comments

[Todd McClamroch]

What a great article. Thanks for sharing.