Stevens crash victims marooned for hours

That's according to a new, still-tentative timeline released by federal investigators Wednesday afternoon.

Four people survived the crash but suffered serious injuries. All remained hospitalized and too ill to talk to investigators Wednesday, according to Deborah Hersman, chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board, who is in Anchorage for the investigation.

Investigators aren't providing information about when people died, including whether any were dying during the hours it took for a rescue to be launched and medical help to come, Hersman told reporters at a press briefing.

"Any discussion of time of death, cause of death will be made by the medical examiner, and the safety board will not be releasing that information," she said.

Sometime Monday afternoon, a de Havilland Otter owned by General Communication Inc. took off from the telecommunications company's lodge on the Agulowak River north of Dillingham for what was supposed to be an afternoon of silver salmon fishing on the Nushagak River. Fifteen minutes later, it plowed into the side of a mountain.

Physician interviewed

NTSB investigators made it to the crash site for the first time at mid-afternoon Wednesday.

There are numerous people to interview, including GCI's chief pilot, its lodge employees, the crash survivors and people involved in the search and rescue. The latter includes paramedics from Dillingham and a doctor flown to the wreckage by private helicopter Monday night as darkness began to close in and rain and fog blanketed the area.

The doctor, the wife of a GCI executive, gave an initial interview Tuesday but still needs to be questioned in depth, Hersman said. GCI president Ron Duncan's wife is Janice Bowman, a physician. Neither Duncan nor Bowman have responded yet to a request for an interview, and GCI hasn't confirmed that she was the doctor who helped the injured passengers through the night.

One area of inquiry concerns the pilot's experience, particularly on that type of plane, and familiarity with the route, Hersman said.

Investigators hoped to get a picture of those last moments from survivors, all hospitalized at Providence Alaska Medical Center.

"Due to their medical condition, we were unable to conduct those interviews today," Hersman said. "Clearly our first priority is their health."

Cockpit gone

Helicopter pilot Tom Tucker, who helped shuttle the medical workers to the scene Monday night, told the Associated Press on Wednesday that he saw one survivor still strapped in the front seat with the nose of the plane in shambles. His head was cut, and his legs were injured.

"The front of the aircraft was gone," Tucker said. "He was just sitting in the chair."

He and the other responders made a tarp tent over the missing cockpit to keep him dry. It was rainy and cold, and Tucker said he believes the passengers' heavy-duty waders protected them from shock. Temperatures ranged from about 48 degrees to 50 degrees overnight at Dillingham. The survivors were scattered throughout the plane, the rescuers said.

Rescuers had to cut alders to reach survivors, and then ripped open the plane to get them out.

Among the survivors, former NASA chief Sean O'Keefe, a friend of Stevens who considered the senator his mentor, was in critical condition late Wednesday afternoon. O'Keefe's son, Kevin, a Syracuse University student, was in serious condition, as was lobbyist Jim Morhard. William "Willy" Phillips, 13, was listed in good condition. A family spokesman for the O'Keefes said they are likely to fully recover.

Besides Stevens, those killed were: Theron "Terry" Smith, the pilot; William "Bill" Phillips, a lobbyist and Willy's father; GCI senior vice president Dana Tindall; and her daughter, 16-year-old Corey.

A minor crash

Smith, 62, was a 28-year Alaska Airlines pilot who retired in 2007. His friends and family describe him as an experienced, cautious pilot. But at least once before, the NTSB investigated a plane accident in which he was involved. In August 1997, he was trying to land his Cessna 185E, equipped with big, tundra tires, at the King Salmon airport but veered left and nosed over a dirt berm, according to an NTSB report on the accident. It was a relatively minor incident with no one hurt.

The probable cause of the 1997 crash was "the pilot's failure to maintain directional control while landing the oversize tire-equipped airplane on dry, newly surfaced, asphalt," the NTSB concluded.

Hours on the mountainside

The new timeline provided Wednesday was based largely on information from the Federal Aviation Administration flight service station in Dillingham, where the earlier information came largely from a GCI employee at the lodge, Hersman said.

According to what the flight service station staff told the NTSB, the plane left the lodge loaded with eight passengers at 2 p.m. The lodge worker had said 3 or 3:15 p.m.

Around 6:30 p.m. or 6:40 p.m., someone from GCI called the flight service station to ask if anyone knew anything about its Otter. No one did. The station employee asked if GCI wanted a search to begin.

"They were told that they did not want them to initiate search-and-rescue activities, but they would give them a call back in a few minutes," Hersman said.

Around 7 p.m., the GCI person called back and asked for the search. An alert went out at 7:16 p.m. about the missing aircraft, Hersman said.

Two Cessna 207s pilots -- both air taxi operators -- were in the area and told FAA they would look.

The NTSB also said Tuesday that a helicopter pilot found the wreckage around 6:30 p.m. Now it appears one of the Cessna pilots found it around 7:45 p.m. or 8 p.m., Hersman said. Pilot John Bouker, owner of Bristol Bay Air Service, radioed in "I found it, I found it" precisely at 8:05 p.m., his wife, Ina, said Tuesday evening. She remembers looking at the clock.

Asked whether there are protocols for pilots to communicate when they land and take off so that authorities are alerted more quickly when a plane is in trouble, Hersman responded that that will be part of the NTSB investigation,

"Those are exactly the questions and the types of things we are looking into. And we will be conducting interviews, as I mentioned, with GCI personnel and also personnel at the fish camp that was the intended destination," she said.

The NTSB has requested recordings from the FAA and those records will include precise times to sort out the discrepancy, she said.

GCI spokesman David Morris said Tuesday evening that he didn't know why it took the people at the lodge several hours to report the plane might be in trouble.

"That's probably going to be a subject of the investigation," he said, adding that GCI pilots try to communicate their whereabouts and usually carry satellite phones, but that technology doesn't work everywhere.

Lodge for entertaining

GCI used the lodge, in an area dotted with high-end fishing lodges and magnificent views, to entertain its executive staff, clients and guests. Stevens went on annual fishing trips there, but the close ties sometimes drew criticism.

At a state legislative hearing in 2002, lawmakers grilled GCI executive Dana Tindall, who died in the crash, about the trips, according to the Associated Press.

Tindall testified that Stevens and Phillips, who also died in the wreck, once arranged for a staff member to travel to the lodge to learn about the telecommunications world as GCI looked to expand its business.

"We entertain business associates. We entertain -- there have been FCC commissioners out there. And there have been members of the United States Congress out there," Tindall told lawmakers.

Aviation dangers in Alaska have prompted federal officials to push for more airplanes to be equipped with a new technology that provides pilots with better weather information, the Associated Press reported.

Federal Aviation Administration chief Randy Babbitt in June credited the technology -- a surveillance system intended in part to help pilots have a greater sense of awareness when they're nearing bad weather -- with "making a real difference" in air safety in Alaska.

The plane Stevens was on was not outfitted with that technology, Jim La Belle, regional director for the NTSB, told The Associated Press. He declined further comment, deferring to the investigative team.

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Find Lisa Demer online at adn.com/contact/ldemer or call 257-4390.