The pilots of Homer got together at Beluga Lake Lodge again last night. We've tried to make it a Thursday ritual. Considering we all compete with each other, there are some delightfully awkward schisms at the table, but overall we learn, and we have fun, and we brag some too... because really, we're pilots. ('How do you tell the pilot in the bar? You don't, he'll tell you.')
What no one mentioned last night: Terry Smith's crash (Terry was flying the plane that Ted Stevens died in... his name doesn't even appear until the very bottom of few news pieces about the crash). Smith's crash is certainly the highest profile in Alaska this summer, but only because of his manifest. Crashes can feel unlucky to talk about. It could have been any of us, right? This is the only Alaska plane crash that has really made national news this summer, but there have been lots. I fly in Katmai almost every day, and I know of at least 5 crashes there since June. Statistics say that 75% of summer plane crashes happen in August, so we're not in clear skies yet.
There haven't been clear skies all summer, in fact. Not in Southcentral Alaska. My most stressful day so far involved 2 unscheduled landings due to weather and an unscheduled refueling stop at a remote airport. Being forced by the weather to land on a lake in the remote center of the Alaska Peninsula to wait for an undetermined amount of time is even more exciting when half your passengers are vomiting.
The guy who operates across Beluga Lake from me was forced to wait on weather on a remote lake recently. For two days and two nights. With four people on board. You know how annoying it is when Delta makes you wait on the tarmac in Minneapolis for 2 hours? Imagine 2 days in a Cessna with the wind blowing at 50 knots outside and the rain hitting the windows sideways. The pilot is embarrassed about getting stuck for two days. I'd rather be embarrassed than dead. And if that's the choice you made, it is something to be proud of. Because nothing is that important. Not bears, not fishing, not photography, not survey work. Not even med-evacs are that important. As my EMT instructor said: "It's not your emergency... don't make it your emergency."
But, bush pilots try really hard to get there. They teach us about it in flight school: "get-there-itis" is the clever name they have, comparing it to a disease... and maybe its not much more. Punching through icy overcast layers, running over the ocean at 30 feet, testing soft, sticky landing spots, pushing along for hundreds of miles in zero visibility...these are the things discussed on Thursday nights, because these are the things Alaskan pilots do. Is it for pride, or is it because if you don't do it, someone else will, and they'll get that paycheck?
There is always pressure to go. Direct or indirect. More often the latter. Because if your competition launches into questionable weather, you sit on the ground and wonder, are they one step ahead of you, or five? And patting yourself on the back for safety won't stop an irate customer from pointing at the other guy's plane as the floats or wheels lift off, demanding "why can't we go?" And for the delicate trust of those Thursday nights, and for fear of those countless wrecks on the tundra, you don't critique another pilot's decision making. You don't try to explain how many planes have disappeared in Cook Inlet. Disappeared... and never made national news. Because no one 'important' was on them. Just some fisherman, or bear viewers. Oh, and a pilot, what was her name? She made a bad decision.
Piloting has gotten safer in the last few years. We've been dropped from #2 to #6 on America's most dangerous jobs, by people who count such things. The argument is for technology, something I have read about a lot in regards to Smith's crash. But, I place a lot of value on decision making. And experience. We don't all have to get the experience first hand. We can sit down, with a beer, and tell another pilot what mistakes we made. And maybe he won't have to make them.
