Need a Cab? In Alaska, Choice Is Plane Enough

Alaska air taxi. Bush Pilot Syndrome. Seat-of-the-pants flying. Fudging maintenance. Surviving wrecks as a rite of passage. Warped machismo.

These phrases jumped out at me from an Anchorage Times article on Alaskan air taxi safety. I’d just finished making arrangements for an air taxi flight from Dillingham to Togiak. What was I letting myself in for?

I’m not a stranger to flying in small single-engine planes. Years ago I passed the check ride for my private pilot’s license after flying the required hours over the plains of Illinois, land of flat fields, flat pastures and tiny lakes. After years of non-flying I was a bit intimidated to start again when I settled in California--land of huge mountains, forests and oceans.

Alaska Is Like California

Alaska is like California; add bigger mountains, 10,000 glaciers and thousands of rivers in five times the area. Then eliminate 23 million people and the roads, buildings and cities. Tell the remaining people they must get around in this vast roadless area. Juneau, the state capital, as an example of the dilemma, cannot be reached by car.

These are the circumstances that have made Alaskans turn to the airplane as a taxi service.

While in Dillingham, a working-class town of 2,000 in the southwestern part of the state, I was planning a trip with photographer Peggy Parks to the Walrus Islands. The charter boat to the islands left from Togiak, 80 miles away. Air taxi was the only way to get there.

Our host said that the flight would be a great way to see the scenic mountains between Dillingham and Togiak, especially if the driving rain abated.

Riding on Mail Plane

We were scheduled on the mail plane leaving at 8 a.m. the next day. As we awoke, we discovered the wind was no longer gale force.The rain was still steady; the cloud layer nearly touching the ground.

As we were loading our packs into the van the driver radioed the airport to see if the mail plane was still scheduled for an 8 a.m. departure. They’d be flying, but could only hold the flight 15 or 20 minutes for us.

As we were barreling down the gravel road toward the airport, a radio call came from the taxi dispatcher:

“I got a fare at 6 Mile on Lake Road to go downtown.”

“Can’t pick them up, I’ve got a couple in here I have to get to the airport,” our driver replied.

“No rush, no one will be flying in this weather!” was the answer.

“Yute Air is,” snapped our driver as she stepped harder on the gas.

How About a Swim?

At the airport I saw a man slouched in a chair leaning against the wall. He wore a ball cap pushed back on his head and a well-worn brown leather jacket with a pair of gloves stuffed into a pocket.

“Bring your swim gear?” our pilot said with a grin. I smiled wanly, looking out to the tarmac where a twin-engine Cessna dripped in the steady rain.

His chair came forward with a thud. As our pilot came around the counter and spied our pile of gear, he muttered “Jeez.”

“Too heavy?” I asked.

“Nah,” he said looking up. “I think we can make it.”

He grabbed a backpack and hurried to the plane. He began stuffing our packs on top of a large stash of cargo and suitcases. We squeezed past and made our way to the seats. Six of us, including the pilot, boarded the eight-passenger plane.

The raggedy seats looked as if they had been removed from an old movie theater. Duct tape lined the door frame; a typed sheet of emergency evacuation instructions was taped above a window.

As he was taxiing toward the runway I heard the pilot tell the passenger to his right, “Just ignore the light. It’s OK.” I turned in time to see the man looking uncertainly at a red light labeled “Cabin Door Ajar.”

Plane Went Too Fast

I was in a seat facing the rear where all the gear was stowed; the plane felt tail-heavy. We raced down the runway. The pilot smoothly rotated the wheel and we began a gradual climb into the rain.

A family of three was returning with us to Togiak. The woman told us her story of driving back to Alaska in a VW van with a broken heater. They stopped to feed coffee to the baby every few miles to fight the cold. The baby was fine, but the woman wound up with frostbite.

The pilot leaned back to say that he was climbing to 10,000 feet. We climbed into the cloud cover. I tried to see out the window, but could only see the wet grayness. The wingtips were barely visible.

Story Recalled

I remembered an item from an article in the Anchorage Times:

” . . . a Cessna 207 flew from Nome to Teller on a February taxi run. The soupy conditions, federal officials say, prompted other pilots to double back to Nome, but the Cessna pressed on. Its flight ended when the single-engine craft smacked into the side of a mountain at full cruising speed.”

The storm cleared well after we had landed safely in Togiak. The flight, except for my imagination, was smooth and uneventful. Our trip to the Walrus Islands was made under clear and sunny skies. The good weather continued the next day.

On our return trip we were treated to what I imagine is a typical flight for an air-taxi pilot. We called the air taxi in Dillingham from Togiak. When it landed we made our way to the end of the gravel runway where the single-engine Piper 160 was unloading. Four plane seats were on the ground next to the plane. Only the pilot’s and right-side seat were left in the plane.

Outboard Motor

The pilot and a couple of other men were trying to get an enormous outboard motor out of the plane. This pilot was a tall,skinny, red-haired fellow, his hands and feet large in proportion to the rest of his body.

As he was struggling to get the seats back into the plane, his first words to us were, “I apologize for having respectable people fly in this airplane. The company should really spend some money to fix up the seats.” He pounded on one to get its four legs set properly in the floor.

Odd Shaped Runway

We left down the curving runway at Togiak Cannery to make the two-mile trip to the main town of Togiak. I settled into the seat behind the pilot; Peggy was next to him in front. After touching down and taxiing to the end of the runway, the pilot let the engine run, hopped over the seat and out the back door to pick up a bright green mail bag.

“Don’t touch anything!” he hollered above the noise of the propeller as he climbed past where I was sitting.

A three-wheel ATV scurried up to the plane and a little girl of about 8 or 10 years jumped off and ran toward the plane. The pilot waved her to the back door.

I reached back to open the door for her. As I did, the two front legs of my seat popped out from their clasps on the floor, but I got the door open and the girl got aboard. We made the two-mile trip back to Togiak Cannery to drop off the mail and the little girl.

As we landed, she asked the pilot, “How much?”

“Ten bucks,” was the reply.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a crumpled wad of $1 bills. She tried unsuccessfully to flatten them out, but managed to count them. Seven. She reached into another pocket and retrieved a handful of change. She carefully counted out quarters and dimes.

The money made quite a mound in her little hands; she cupped them and solemnly held them out for the pilot. He cupped his hands, equally solemn, and received the treasure; she hopped off the plane and ran toward the cannery.

“Only one more stop, about two miles from here,” said the pilot as we headed down the runway. “We got to pick up two passengers at Twin Hills.” By this time I was enjoying the ride. The day was sunny with a few puffy clouds.

In three minutes we’d made the flight and were waiting as a truck raced up a rise toward us on the runway. A young woman hurried up to the plane.

“I’ve got a passenger, his name is Jules,” she said. “He needs to go to the hospital, he’s been having severe respiratory problems. He’s seemed to stabilize, so I think he’ll be OK for the trip, so I’m not coming along.”

“OK,” said the pilot, “put him in back. I’ll radio the hospital when we get closer, and have them send an ambulance out to meet us.”

She went back to the truck. She and another man helped an elderly man toward the plane. He shuffled slowly. I reached for the door handle behind me. Jules stooped over to get into the plane. He maneuvered slowly to settle in his seat.

He looked at me. I could see every one of a hundred lines in his face, every whisker protruding from his chin and lip.

“I have bad breath,” he said to me in broken English, clutching at his chest.

Gasping for Air

As we took off I glanced back at him to see how he was handling the reduced oxygen level at our altitude of 1,000 feet. He had slumped forward in his seat. I checked for breathing, and saw his chest slowly rising and falling.

I looked out my window at the hills slipping past, the green-brown tundra and serpentine rivers. Turning toward him, I saw his mouth open wide, gasping for air and his face turning blue. I found myself glancing at him frequently, checking his chest for movement.

He stirred once and began fumbling in his pocket. I turned, expecting him to be struggling to get at some medication.

He pulled out a notebook and carefully made a few notes. A few minutes later he was slumped forward again. By then I realized that he was sleeping, not slipping into a coma.

Safely back at the Bristol Bay Inn in Dillingham, I reflected on my bush flight experience. Although the weather had been inclement, the flight was smooth and trouble-free on the way to Togiak; both pilots had seemed confident and capable. The planes looked well-traveled, like any self-respecting taxi, but they performed well.

By evening, with a glass of wine under my belt, I wasn’t even unnerved by the picture in the Bristol Bay Times of a Yute Air plane that crunched a landing gear and propeller a few days earlier. After all, the FAA had been quoted in the accompanying story as saying Yute Air had a safety record that was “pretty good.” I reached for a second glass of wine. “Hell,” I thought, “I knew that all along.”

For further information, contact Alaska Division of Tourism, Dept. of Commerce and Economic Development, P.O. Box E, Juneau, Alaska 99811, phone (907) 465-2010.