#13: On frustrating Alaskan aviation observations + thoughts on skydiving ops

Recently both the FAA deputy administrator and an NTSB board member visited AK and discovered rural residents are dependent on aviation. I cannot believe we are still having this conversation.

A cargo flight in a Piper Navajo - everything in this picture (but the stacked seats) is U.S. mail. This flight was operated by the company I worked for in the mid-90s. Nothing has changed.

I appreciate all subscribers but my pending legal bills are kinda scary. If you can pay for a subscription to my newsletter, that’s where the money goes. (I can’t say much about the lawsuit, but if you are unfamiliar you can read a bit of it here.)

FAA deputy administrator Katie Thomson spoke at the Global Autonomous Systems Conference in Anchorage two weeks ago. She also toured the Anchorage tower, visited Fairbanks and learned that many things are delivered by airplanes in Alaska. From local news coverage of her visit:

Thomson was not directly available for an interview, but in a prerecorded statement released by the FAA’s public affairs team, Thomson acknowledged Alaska’s dependency on aviation, with 86% of communities not accessible by road.

“Alaskans rely on aviation not just to travel, but to get everyday necessities like food and diapers, construction materials, heating fuel, and even medical attention — things those of us in the Lower 48 get at the grocery store to use in our day-to-day life,” Thomson said. “It is important that [the FAA] continue to stay connected to make sure Alaska’s skies stay safe and that communities get the aviation resources they need.”

NTSB Board Member J. Todd Inman was in the state last week and he also learned that cargo is flown in Alaska. In a statement on the agency’s website, he did note that much of the cargo is actually mailed but the same sense of wide-eyed discovery remains:

One of the most eye-opening experiences for the team was flying a postal route from Bethel, Alaska, to the villages of Kongiganak (Kong) and Kwigillingok (Kwig). Unlike the image that normally comes to mind of coupons sliding through the door and Amazon packages tucked behind a bush, this journey revealed the vital role that aviation plays in these isolated communities. Here, air carriers are not just delivering letters but essential supplies like medications, food, and motor oil. The stark reality of this reliance on air transport underscored its role in sustaining daily life in the Alaskan Yukon. It also brought to light the significant challenges that come with building and sustaining aviation infrastructure, dealing with dynamic weather conditions, and maintaining situational awareness in the cockpit.

I am so tired of the FAA and NTSB relearning how Alaska’s aviation industry operates

In case you did not know, pilots have been delivering medicine, food and other essential supplies for a century. We even have pictures to prove it! Here is Ben Eielson (far left) getting ready to fly an airplane with really big “US MAIL” letters on it in 1924.

The connection between AK aviation and the US Postal Service has been studied, debated, demonized and discussed for decades. The NTSB studied the negative impact of pressure from the USPS on Part 135 operators in both 1980 and 1995 and the FAA, along with DOT, NIOSH, and plenty of academics, (including me, as a grad student), have written about it. When then NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt held a big Part 135 safety roundtable in Anchorage in 2019, the USPS had a representative attend and was part of the discussion. Everyone who investigates the Alaska aviation industry knows that airplanes fly a lot of mail. A lot. (Ten minutes on the Bureau of Transportation Statistics website will show anyone who cares to look the exact mail figures, in the tens of millions of pounds, that are flown in AK annually.)

And then there is US Postmaster Louis DeJoy who really really hates the Alaska mail system and has testified before Congress about it. Before DeJoy, there was a 2014 hearing in Congress about the mail where the USPS complained a lot (and also proved to be very confused about how aviation and the USPS work together). And before all of that was the big deal, the passage in 2002 of the Rural Services Improvement Act (RSIA) which is a federal law that very specifically dictates exactly how the USPS and AK aviation industry work together. (Not to get off track here, but on top of everything else RSIA dictates passenger vs cargo dispatch of the mail so when I see folks saying that using unmanned cargo aircraft for mail delivery is the wave of the future for Alaska, I assume they know nothing about RSIA and how it would prevent much of that from happening.)

All of this is to say that if you are the slightest bit interested in aviation safety in Alaska, you would already know that rural Alaska is dependent on aviation for things like medicine and food and motor oil and whatever else Thomson and Inman saw getting loaded on a plane during their visits. (I should note here that if Inman really wanted to experience moving the mail in Alaska he should visit in December and load tripaks on the ramp in Fairbanks at 20 below. It is a transformative experience.) (If you know, you know.)

It’s not that the weather is bad, it’s that the weather reporting is not nearly good enough

Here is what the NTSB’s Inman had to say about weather reporting:

A recurring theme throughout the visit was the significant impact of weather on aviation safety in Alaska, particularly the challenges Alaskan aviators face accessing and using reliable weather data in flight planning and while en route. The need for improved usable weather data, advanced equipment, and robust infrastructure and maintenance was evident in every discussion. Improving weather forecasting and related support systems is crucial for making flying safer and more consistent, especially in Alaska’s most remote and hard-to-reach areas.

And here is Thomson on the same topic:

Thomson went on to say that critical components, such as FAA weather cameras and visual weather observation systems, play a vital role in aviation safety, and that the FAA is looking at ways to ensure aviators have access to timely and accurate weather information.

“Weather was the one issue raised by everyone we met,” Thomson said. “Being there helped me better understand the region’s unique challenges and opportunities.”

And here is an excerpt from the 1980 NTSB Special Study: Air Taxi Safety in Alaska on the same topic¹:

During the interviews in Alaska, the lack of navaids and inadequate weather reporting and inadequate communications of the weather information were repeatedly cited by operators and pilots flying in the more rural areas as being significant factors in weather-related accidents. The pilots in western Alaska stated that the installation of navaids would greatly enhance their ability to cope with the unanticipated low ceiling and poor visibility often encountered during whiteouts or when the weather suddenly deteriorates. Also, navaids would reduce the number of accidents that occur when attempting, in marginal weather conditions, to fly into villages that are in desperate need of air service.

And here is an excerpt from the FAASI², (FAA Alaska Aviation Safety Initiative) the most recent study of Alaska aviation safety published in October 2021:

The lack of certified weather reporting and forecasts is a significant impediment to aviation operations in Alaska. Currently, there are 133 automated weather reporting stations compared to roughly 1,800 for the lower 48 states. Analysis indicates approximately 157 airports are without a Terminal Aerodrome Forecast (TAF). Several airports have instrument approach procedures, but do not have a weather source at the airport as required by regulation for IFR commercial operations, preventing IFR operations to that airport.

Are you sensing a recurring theme? The FAASI also noted that just because the FAA lists 133 AWOS in Alaska doesn’t mean they work.

AWOS comments also included outage concerns and inquiries regarding telecommunications upgrades to existing systems. The air carrier community was very uniform in their on-going concern about how the FAA identifies and manages outages. One carrier emphasized, “Telecommunication issues aren’t reported by the FAA as a broken AWOS. From an operator standpoint, if an AWOS has a partial outage or a telco issue then the operators can’t fly because they don’t have the information needed.”

A moment of cynicism

I could go on and on about how everyone is so dang surprised by Alaska’s inferior aviation infrastructure and has to come up and see it for themselves so they can report back (to who???) about what they now understand that the state needs.

I could talk about how these folks could just read a report paid for by the agencies they work for and it would tell them everything they need to know.

I could tell them to do the math on the size of Alaska versus its weather aids and compare that to the Lower 48.

I could tell them to study accident reports and ignore the parts about “pilot’s decision to fly VFR into IMC” and consider how things would have gone differently if the pilots could have flown IFR to begin with.

But I don’t want to do that anymore.

The 2024 FAA Reauthorization Bill did include funds for improved weather reporting in Alaska. So, maybe, 44 glorious years after the NTSB Special Study, the federal government has decided that spending money on Alaska aviation infrastructure like they spend it in the Lower 48 is the way to save lives. It would be really cool if that is true. I will wait to see just what gets built, and how effectively the equipment is maintained.

Switching gears, some thoughts on skydiving ops

A notice of a preliminary accident report came across twitter a couple of weeks ago and because it involved a Cessna Caravan I took a look in case it was Part 135. As it turns out, it was Part 91 and involved a skydiving operator. The pilot, who was sole occupant at the time, was killed. This was his sixth flight of the day. Here’s a bit of the report:

According to video imagery captured during the jump, after the skydivers departed the airplane, the airplane pitched over in a dive, and rolled right along its vertical axis before going out of view.

A witness in the area observed the airplane descending rapidly “straight down,” towards the ground. Another witness observed the airplane with “one wing pointed towards the ground,” and “one wing pointed towards the sky;” the airplane impacted the ground, and debris was thrown up on to a roadway.

Here’s the flight track from the prelim:

In building my database of Part 135-involved accidents in the U.S., I have spent a ton of time (by necessity) reading Part 91 accident reports. Skydiving was not on my radar at all when I began this project; I was looking mostly for medevac and cargo accidents that involved Part 135 operators but occurred under Part 91 conditions (typically during “positioning”). I began to notice quite a few skydiving accidents however and am now building a separate database of those just to see what the numbers are. (I’m also doing the same thing for public use flights so ultimately there will be many commercial aviation databases on my hard drive.)

Skydiving is generally Part 91 because it involves flights that occur within 25 miles of departure. (If they go further than that, they have to be a Part 135 operation.) (The 25 mile rule is one of those old rules that kinda drives me nuts as it is so arbitrary.)

There already is some tracking of skydiving accidents, but as it is by industry groups, I’m a bit skeptical. (I always wonder if accidents like the recent one, which involved no paying customers, make it into these stats.) Also, a fatality due to a parachute issue is not what I’m looking for; I’m looking strictly at aircraft accidents.

Another recent example was a Cessna 182 triple fatality crash in early July involving a pilot and two skydiving instructors in North Carolina. The aircraft was leased from Airstar Aviation, along with the pilot who was an independent contractor. The two instructors were contractors with Skydive Mountain City. They conducted eight flights with customers and then departed Johnson County Airport for Rutherford where the pilot lived (the NTSB thus classifies this as Part 91: Positioning) at 8:30PM.

From the prelim - the aircraft impacted mountainous terrain at the 2,000 foot level:

I am trying to build ten year databases on all of these accidents: Part 135, medevac, cargo, public use and skydiving. (And update my Alaska Part 135 database which goes back to 1990.) The first goal is one year, then five, then ten. It’s tedious but the data is important and will allow me to see patterns in why crashes occur in various types of overlooked commercial aviation.

Finally, here’s another picture of Ben Eielson in the US Mail plane from 1924. He was killed in a plane crash five years later, but that’s a story for another day. (I include this additional pic because I think Eielson was really wicked cool.)

1. If you want to read it, you can download it from Embry Riddle.

2. Now renamed the Don Young Alaska Aviation Safety Initiative.