#22: On Alaska, and aviation safety everywhere

Two days ago Bering Air went missing enroute to Nome and in the hours before the wreckage with no survivors was found, I hoped Alaska would pull out a miracle in the midst of so much bleakness. Now, I’m going to write about what I know.

Bering Air went down with ten souls onboard. It was a scheduled flight in a Cessna Caravan, a very common aircraft in rural Alaska. Bering has been in business for 45+ years. In my database of Part 135-involved¹ accidents, which goes back to 1990, Bering appears seventeen times. It has had no fatalities and the only serious injury was someone who attempted suicide by walking into a spinning propeller. (There last accident was in 2017.) For context, the company with the worst safety record in my database was Hageland Aviation. It had 43 accidents with 29 fatalities and seven serious injuries. (And it went out of business five years ago.)

Bering Air has been known for as long as I can remember as one of the safest airlines in Alaska history. That is why this accident is such a shock to so many people; we can’t wrap our heads around this happening with them.

What Happens Next

The deceased have been recovered and the mission now is to recover the aircraft before a forecasted storm moves in. The Caravan is on the ice and moving at five miles a day, according to NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy who is now in Alaska. A lot of people who know what they are doing are trying to get that plane back to Nome where it can reveal everything it knows to the investigators waiting to pour over it.

I am waiting on the preliminary report, on the facts it will share not only about the weather (which we know was not good) but to make certain it was not a critical medical event with the pilot or a catastrophic mechanical failure with the aircraft. The Prelim will provide us with clues as to what the NTSB has been finding as it talks to Bering management, the company’s FAA inspectors and the folks who spoke with the pilot both before he left Unalakleet and in the air. After the Prelim we should have a better idea where the investigation is going.

The Bigger Picture

Alaska aviation continues to operate within an underfunded aviation environment that does not provide nearly as much support as the Lower 48 enjoys. We do not have certified weather at all public airports and so we can not fly IFR (under instruments) to those airports. We do not have instrument approaches at every airport that receives regular traffic. Airports where we do have certified weather and approaches suffer from maintenance issues that make those technological advances unuseable. We do not have weather cameras in places where low level flying is common and instrument routes impossible (especially Southeast Alaska). We have black spots where communication with Anchorage Center, which controls an enormous swath of Alaskan airspace, can not be reached. And because of all these things and more, things the FAA and NTSB have been aware of for decades because they have studied them for decades, airplanes and helicopters crash in Alaska far more than they should.

The state is still a heavily VFR aviation environment. If IFR was available at every commercial airport then air carriers would embrace it and those who did not would fall aside. If nothing else, Alaska deserves the chance to join the 21st century as much as every other state in the country. We have paid an enormous price for the stinginess of Congress. There have been 403 fatalities in Part 135-involved crashes since 1990 and 232 serious injuries. That’s almost four 737s of the dead and damaged. It should be enough to grant us the dollars to stop adding metal to the landscape. Regardless of the cause behind this latest tragedy, we know the primary reason behind Alaska’s horrific air safety record. We know exactly what to do to change it. We know all it will cost is money. What I can’t figure out is when the hurt will be enough to persuade the people in power to pay to get the job done.

Pennsylvania, Washington DC and everything else to worry about

I just submitted an article to the industry site Leeham News about what I’ve learned over the past week on the Potomac midar. It clear to me that the accident is about not just the investigation but the politicizing of the investigation. I think the NTSB is already homing in on what happened with the Black Hawk and the CRJ, and I certainly have my suspicions, but the politics of the airspace and FAA staffing not only at Reagan National but through the agency, are rapidly becoming an unholy mess. I have some more folks I’m going to talk to next week on that part of the story and will hopefully have a chance to write about it for publication. If not, I’ll post what I learn here. (I am on to something. Not a huge something, but a something worth knowing about.)

For Pennsylvania, the NTSB has the cockpit voice recorder and the engines and are gathering data and what I’m wondering about is a thrust reverser issue. You can google it and see this has been an issue with Lear Jets in the past and is something that could result in a devastating crash after takeoff. As lots of folks have pointed out, the odds that the accident was due to weight issues (or center of gravity issues) are slim. And as far as the aircraft being with a Mexican company, which operates partly out of Miami, I don’t think that’s anything to do with it. We 100% need the Preliminary Report on this to get any idea of what went wrong.

Then there’s Elon Musk.

After hitting several other government departments, President Trump is now, according to him, unleashing Musk and his wrecking crew on the FAA. You don’t need me to tell you that nothing good will come of this. The Air Traffic Control system is complex, the people who work within it and repair it can not be easily replaced, the aviation safety oversight system, which is already understaffed with inspectors and support staff at every single level, can not be cut any further to the bone. We already know what Musk and the Trump Administration think of federal employees. Threats to the FAA, and likely the NTSB, are real and we ignore them at our own peril.

As to my life…

The judge presiding over my case agrees that since I won the Plaintiff must put up a bond to cover my legal fees for their appeal to go forward. (This is the law but they didn’t want to do it.) So, I wait on that (or we have to force the issue) and for the appeal to advance. It’s a win, but winning is still ungodly expensive.

This month I am sending out the slightly revamped proposal for my Cosmic Ray Expedition book to ten agents. (You might have thought I gave up on this and I wouldn’t blame you. Last year was hell and for awhile I didn’t think I would ever write anything again or even try again for an agent.) I’m also trying for a fellowship that could support writing that book and I’m working on a big article on medevacs (started gathering info months ago) which will involve over 15 years of statistics. (I have my whole family helping me mine the NTSB database for this info; I’m deeply paranoid that site will be shutdown.)

I am planning to write here more often because while I continue to pitch aviation articles, not a lot of folks are buying. This is likely where I will be publishing a look at what Alaska’s aviation industry has to fear from federal funding cuts as my pitches have not garnered any takers up there. So, more coming from me. As always, thanks so much to all of you for reading and especially the paid subscribers. My lawyer thanks you as well!

Oh, wait!

I didn’t mention the amazing, unreal, infuriating research I found last week about how women were pushed out of commercial aviation in the 1930s. If you read my newsletter last May on Marvel Crosson, you will have an idea on what I learned. But there is so much more of the story to tell! That is coming soon!

1. For you aviation types, when I say “Part 135-involved” I mean that I include accidents in my database if a Part 135 was operating under Part 133 (helicopter external load) or Part 91 (general aviation) at the time of the accident. This way, I do not miss accidents occuring during “Repositioning” or “Training” flights which are not uncommon in Part 135.