Alaska News

Floatplane safety requires special attention in Alaska

On July 10, 2012, a Cessna 206 on floats crashed while landing on Beluga Lake, in Homer. The pilot and four passengers departed Anchorage earlier that day on a private flight to Homer for a planned fishing trip the next day. Three of the passengers and the pilot, Joe Griffith, sustained minor injuries in the accident. Passenger and former state legislator Cheryll Heinze was killed.

The NTSB determined the cause of the Beluga Lake accident was "The pilot's improper evaluation of the weather conditions and his subsequent downwind water landing in gusting wind conditions, which resulted in a nose-over." For many floatplane pilots, the cause of the accident was all too familiar, echoing similar crashes going back through decades of landings on Alaska's lakes and rivers.

Safety issues concerning floatplanes and overwater operations are a special consideration in Alaska, but the aviation community is not always willing to acknowledge such issues.

"I have stood before groups and told them, 'you can't learn to escape a wreck from a PowerPoint presentation,'" stresses Learn to Return's Brian Horner. But while pilots likely understand that, convincing them to commit the time and money to learn how to get out of the water alive has not been easy for the survival training school.

Anchorage's Lake Hood is the largest seaplane base in the world, and pilots operate on lakes and rivers statewide both in general aviation and to support a thriving fly-in tourism industry. Overwater operators also transport passengers to offshore oil rigs and other industrial destinations.

There are two aspects to floatplane operation that must be addressed when considering safety: exercising proper risk management in the air and post-crash survival in the water. A poor landing choice or failure to judiciously set up for landing increases the risk of a a crash. To mitigate this possibility, pilots are cautioned to make a pass, either high or low or both, prior to landing, especially if unfamiliar with the site. They should also be wary of the deceptive nature of glassy water conditions, a particular danger for new or infrequent fliers.

For Todd Rust of Rust's Flying Service, reducing risk at his company means "avoiding surprises." As he explained in a recent phone conversation, some landing conditions do require an overflight and pilots need to err on the side of caution.

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"Wave characteristics are something you need to see close-up," he said. "A low approach can do that and the wave patterns will often reveal evidence of air turbulence and wind gusts you won't otherwise see."

Eliminating surprise is a key part of flight training for the Anchorage flight-seeing and air taxi operator. "Complacency can lead to overconfidence," says Rust. "This can make a pilot think he doesn't need to overfly, that he can handle the surprise." And all too often in floatplanes, the surprise involves sudden immersion in water.

The difficulty of post-crash water survival is evident from past accident investigations. In 2010, the Federal Aviation Administration issued a report of the years 2004-2009 entitled "Fatal and Serious Injury Accidents in Alaska" that gave particular focus to post-crash survival. It found that "adequate survival training, properly implemented, could have affected the outcome in 10 accidents with an opportunity to save 19 lives." The report specifically cited so-called "dunker" training and also the importance of rescue air bottles.

A classic example of the type of accident the FAA referred to can be found in the 2000 crash of a Cessna 185 in Longmare Lake near Soldotna. The pilot and three passengers all survived the impact with minor injuries but the pilot, although lucid, was unable to release his seatbelt. In the 40 degree water, his passengers were unable to save him despite their best efforts. Later analysis of the wreckage found the seatbelt was undamaged suggesting that training might have better prepared him to operate its mechanism in stressful circumstances.

By contrast, a 2010 crash involving a de Havilland Beaver on Figure Eight Lake north of Anchorage saw all three occupants, members of the Civil Air Patrol, survive uninjured. The CAP chief of flight safety told the NTSB the occupants had all attended underwater egress training, "...which benefited them during their escape from the submerged cabin".

Learn to Return has trained 17,000 people in underwater egress training courses, the youngest of whom was 8 years old. LTR president Brian Horner describes the lessons learned in these courses as "fragile skills" which is why the company requires its graduates retake them every two years to remain current. He stresses that underwater egress, in particular, is training that can not be learned in a classroom setting and must be experienced in the pool, in circumstances as close to a real crash as possible. He has struggled however to convey the importance of the training to Alaska's general aviation pilots.

"I'm frustrated," admits Horner. "We would like to see a lot more general aviation pilots in here so we can teach them what we know."

In the past, the FAA and other aviation affiliated organizations have approached LTR to form a concentrated outreach effort, especially after the Beluga Lake crash, but nothing yet has come of that, according to Horner and LTR continues to wait for the floatplane community to embrace the increased level of safety its training offers.

Era Helicopters Alaska sends all of their pilots who are scheduled for offshore operations to helicopter underwater egress training every three years at an out-of-state facility. The company, which bases a dozen twin-engine helicopters in the state, also enrolls pilots in training for Emergency Breathing Systems through LTR. Era sees a valuable safety investment in all of this training, even though it is not required by the FAA.

"We don't want our pilots to fly over water without being prepared," said Elliot Neal, Vice President of Alaska operations for Era, in a phone conversation. "Any training that you practice, you have in your mind and it's there when you need it." With 50 active Alaska pilots through the HUET program, Era Helicopter's continued commitment to the training is clear, regardless of whether or not it is ever needed.

LifeMed Alaska has 50 flight nurses and paramedics who have gone through HUET training at Learn to Return. The air ambulance company's relationship with LTR dates back to 2008 and underwater safety is an important component of its safety program.

"Crash survival is a topic that no one enjoys to discuss, let alone imagine; but it is a very real danger that cannot be ignored," stated Brian Heaslet, LifeMed Alaska's Director of Health, Safety, Environmental and Training in an email. "While an event requiring these skills is highly unlikely, it carries with it very drastic and harsh conditions. The immediate impact of the confusion and disorientation will lead to an individual's first reaction to be panic. When a person begins to panic their training must take over. It is this basis that makes HUET so important to everyone at LifeMed Alaska."

In the Beluga Lake crash, there was difficulty exiting the aircraft, but that wasn't where the problems began. A pilot witness told the NTSB investigator that there were "strong and gusty wind conditions, out of the northeast at 20 to 25 knots" and he "observed the accident airplane on final approach for a southwest, downwind landing. The aircraft touched down about mid-lake. The nose of the left float dug into the water, the left wing struck the water, and the airplane rapidly nosed over."

According to the accident report, one of the passengers was able to force the right passenger door open but there was a struggle for everyone to exit the wreckage. None of them were able to save Heinze, who was injured and seated in the rear left seat. Rescuers eventually freed her but she did not regain consciousness. Heinze was 65 years old.

"Most, if not all, of the survivors of water crashes in the medevac industry have cited HUET as the one thing that made it possible for them to make it out of the submerged aircraft and become rescued during that frightening period of time," said Heaslet. "LifeMed Alaska has brought guest speakers up from the Lower 48 in past conferences that can personally attest to the advantages of such training and its necessity in operations such as ours."

And the Alaskan Aviation Safety Foundation's Harry Kieling asserts, "As pilots, we need to plan to be the best survivor we can be and ensure our passengers are as well. There's an understandable reluctance to scare passengers -- pilots don't want to tell them something that acknowledges the possibility of an accident. But if you don't prepare your passengers for what might go wrong, they have nothing to fall back on in the worst case scenario."

The appeal of Alaska's lakes and rivers for floatplane pilots is easy to appreciate, but operating in these environments makes certain demands upon pilots, both before and after touchdown. It looks easy in the videos on YouTube, but pilots should never forget how quickly a surprise can occur and how little room for error there is when water comes rushing in.

Contact Colleen Mondor at colleen[at]alaskadispatch.com.

Colleen Mondor

Colleen Mondor is the author of "The Map of My Dead Pilots: The Dangerous Game of Flying in Alaska." Find her at chasingray.com or on Twitter @chasingray.

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