AlaskaAV
GONE WEST
Mission, TX
Check list......Do as I say, not as I do
At one point out of Fairbanks, Wien (Wien Consolidated Airlines at the time) had a scheduled flight out of FAI to a bush town with a Shorts Skyvan SC7.
Scheduled as captain was our light aircraft chief pilot. All went well with preflight, passenger loading and departure but within 20 minutes, here comes the aircraft back. He pulled up near the front of the terminal while he called for fuel. Yep, he overlooked taking on any fuel and I believe fuel quantity was part of the Sky Van pre-start checklist as on all aircraft.
Check list??? Hint, hint, hint.
That Skyvan was quite an aircraft for us. Due to a stupid error, I have seen it carry a payload over 7600 pounds of lumber out of Bettles to a smaller private strip. The captain said it was a little "sluggish" on lift off. That's about 4,000 pounds over max gross for a 12,500 A/C on departure. I suspect the Twin Otter would do the same thing if asked to.
If a DC-2 1/2 (A DC-3 with a DC-2 wing on one side) can take off in the far east with 58 passengers, a well built aircraft can do anything with the right person in the left seat. A story about a 747 emergency evac with over 1000 (I believe close to 1050) passengers? Anyone know that story?
Government test with a Shorts Skyvan
At one point as director of cargo at Fairbanks, a government agency, agency name not important but not the FAA or NTSB, approached me and asked if we would help in a test. They wanted to load a VW Van in one of our Skyvans and than load the same van on one of our 737-210 QCs. They got the van on loan from the local VW dealer so one Sunday afternoon when each aircraft was available, we started on the project between normal scheduled flight operations. The Van would fit inside the Skyvan OK, proper tiedown was possible and the weight was within limits if the van was empty and of course the W&B on the 737 was OK.
The Feds would never tell me why the test but thanked the company for helping of course. Of course they didn't pay us anything so you guys saved tax money there. From some questions they asked, I figured it had something to do with foreign activity somehow and related to bush operations in many countries since they paid special attention to the landing gear on the Skyvan. As far as I know, Wien was the only US carrier at the time that had both the Skyvan and the 210 QCs. They had to have done some research to find us.
Low on fuel with a Porter, PC6
Working out of Dahl Creek, I had a backlog of mail and cargo for the town of Shungnak. I asked the Porter pilot, probably one of the best pilots I have ever met in my aviation life and who now lives in Kotzebue (you guys from OTZ and OME will know him but please don't post his name unless he says it is OK or ask him to join in), for a minimum fuel load so I could move as much as possible. After all, if it fits in a Porter, it will fly. He took it with fuel on board which he thought would be enough for the 20 mile round trip. After he got in the air and leveled off, the gauges were a little lower on quantity than he felt comfortable with so when he got to Shungnak, he bought 5 gal of car gas so he would feel more comfortable going back to Dahl Creek. That 5 gal was below the max amount of gas allowed to burn before having to report it to maint.
Overload of a Wien F-27A, P&W powered
At one point, a shipper brought in a load of lumber for a bush location, Bettles, serviced by our F-27s. The cargo receiving agent, kind of a lazy guy anyway, decided to weigh one piece of lumber and count the number of pieces. Might seem like a good idea until you understand that he chose a 2 x 4 to weigh and there were many, many 2 x 6s and 2 x 10 in the shipment. Our cargo crew loaded the F-27 with the entire shipment and off we go on an extra section flight with no passengers. As I recall, they got about half way down the runway before the captain shut it down and brought the aircraft back to our loading area. He said he couldn't get the nose off the ground on rotation. Maybe shift the load back a little or take some load off. As I recall, we took some weight off since it would be faster. He tried it again and the same thing so back it comes.
I was called up to the ramp were I started looking at paperwork first. It didn't take long to figure out why the problem happened. I suspect the aircraft was around 10,000 pounds over gross to start with. Since no gear came off the ground, we didn't have to go through the over gross landing check but the aircraft was still taken to the hanger and run through an indepth check. I was short two employees later that day at no great loss.
Race from Barrow to Fairbanks, C-46A against a 749 Connie.
Some aircraft can fly faster than the books say I guess. I did not hear this being talked about at Barrow before departure, but suspect two captains made a bet about who could get to Fairbanks the fastest. One was our 749 Connie, 7777G (story about that aircraft later) on a regular passenger flight which I was traveling on. The other was an empty C-46A (smaller engine than the normal supers). Both taxied out at the same time and the Connie departed first and the C-46 followed almost immediately, much like Wien flight 7777G, flight of two. I did not see the C-46 pass us but it was taxing in at Fairbanks when we landed the Connie. Remember, the Connie was probably the fastest commercial passenger aircraft in it's days.
I was told later that the C-46, good old 92853, went through a double engine change starting the next day. I know nothing....
Maintenance error-C-46A N92853
At a point, there was a company cargo flight in 1965 of drummed diesel for our power generator, drummed av gas, groceries for us and misc supplies. Great weather, for Umiat which at the time, was the only emergency airport on the entire north slope of Alaska and had to be open 24/7/365. Turnaround went great but on departure, they got a fire warning light in the right engine but looking back they couldn't see any problem so they pulled it back to idle and brought it back in. With the flight crew's help, I brought up a ladder and opened up that engine and what we found was unbelievable.
First of all, the C-46A only has 5 fire sensors compared to, I believe, 28 on the Supers. We found a broken wire on a sensor but no big deal there. While looking things over, we found the prop deicer line just laying on the engine case and pointed toward an exhaust stack. Anyone care to guess what would have happened if the flight crew had used that system in flight? We probably could have fixed everything easy but, as he should have, the captain got on our HF radio and called maintenance and the company had to fly in a couple of mechanics to attach the hose. Does anyone suspect the captain might have really been angry? By the way, the aircraft had just came out of maintenance just before the flight.
More on maintenance problems with aircraft later.
C-46, N92853, load of TNT
For the work in the mine shaft Kennecott Copper was working on at Bornite, they used a lot of dynamite and at one point, they had us fly in a shipment of 250 cases of dynamite in one trip. Shades of the huge explosion in North Korea recently, right? On departure out of Fairbanks, arrangements were made with the tower for using lights instead of any radios at all and there would be no communications enroute. Departure day was chosen based on reported weather and forecasts since the entire flight would have to be VFR with no NDB capability. Read: no radios. Off goes good old reliable 92853 again in search of another memory. Alaska would be in trouble today without that aircraft and those that flew it so well in the past and as far as I know, it is still flying to the bush out of Fairbanks. Much the same as good old C-46 Super, 60V (Sixty Volts as everyone called her)..our competitor, which is still parked in Fairbanks but beyond flying because of it's last trip. The final commercial flight of
C-46 60V into Prudhoe Bay will come up later.
About an hour or so after the flight left Fairbanks, my International crawler loader bought the dust so it was just me, a passenger loading ramp against 250, 50 pound cases of TNT.
Since I knew it was going to take a long time to offload, I sent the flight crew to our home where my wife fed them, steaks of all things. Once I got a feel of how long it would take, we fixed them up with a place to sleep so they could be legal to fly back. They offered to help offload of course as did all flight crews in the bush did all the time.
I tried carrying two cases at a time which was 100 pounds but so awkward it didn't work and I really didn't want to drop 50 pounds of TNT out of the aircraft door on the ground. So, it was like 250 times climbing up and down that passenger loading ramp, in the dark with no lights at all, with a guy that had already worked 20 hours straight. It took 7 hours to offload. Gee, what a guy will do for an employer he believed so much in and believing the life in the bush was worth everything we went through. I had parked the aircraft so he could swing the tail away from the stacked boxes of TNT enough to clear them as he made his taxied out. Only in the bush of Alaska. Try that at LAX or ORD.
Later, I was to offload the same aircraft at Dahl Creek with many loads of 153 bags of cement for the same mine shaft project of Kennecott. On those trips I had the use of my loader so I could just load the 100 pound bags on pallets, climb down and move them away. Anyone remember what the slope the C-46 has when parked? I got so tired walking up that cabin floor that I started carrying two bags at a time just to save the uphill walk. Temps, even with the emergency exit doors open, were around 90 degrees inside. We always had to be so very, very careful of cement dust getting into the cockpit. The cockpit door was sealed with tape as was the bulkhead between the cabin and the cockpit area. Plastic material was also covering the entire panel. Sure raises hell with instruments. While waiting for the crew to come back from fishing (I always handed them my fishing gear and pointed them to Dahl Creek just after they deplaned. I also offered my gold pan since there was lots of good flakes in the creek) my wonderful wife would meet me with a frosty ice cold cool one in a mug. (or two). A VP in FAI got word of what I was going on through so he started sending a Fairbanks cargo guy with the flight to help. Come to find out, with his help, it took 30 minutes longer to offload than by doing it myself so I got that stopped on the second load. Oh was I in good shape back than. It usually took an hour and ten minutes to offload 13,500 pounds and hand pump 110 gal of av gas. Our competitor flying a Super C-46 had their aircraft set up for pallet loading and I also offloaded it. We got their turnaround down to 7 minutes, block to block for 13,000 pounds.
Winter departure out of FAI Convair 880
A post elsewhere reminded me of this flight out of FAI in the winter.
An unnamed airline departed a Convair flight on a very cold winter day or night? (dark most of the time in the winter) and all went well until they got to about 1000 foot. There was such a temperature inversion (-40 on the ground and something like 32 above zero at 1000 foot) that the fuel control system could not keep up and all four flamed out. God gave the crew and their own ability enough time to relight all four and continue on with the flight after talking everything over with maintenance or at least I don't recall that they came back in for an inspection. That same aircraft had another problem, either on take off or go around out of FAI when it ended up with some tree branches in the gear. There were no pictures taken of the path through the tops of the trees on the departure end but several of our flight crews say they could see it easy. There was no apparent damage to the aircraft and all trees lived.
At one point out of Fairbanks, Wien (Wien Consolidated Airlines at the time) had a scheduled flight out of FAI to a bush town with a Shorts Skyvan SC7.
Scheduled as captain was our light aircraft chief pilot. All went well with preflight, passenger loading and departure but within 20 minutes, here comes the aircraft back. He pulled up near the front of the terminal while he called for fuel. Yep, he overlooked taking on any fuel and I believe fuel quantity was part of the Sky Van pre-start checklist as on all aircraft.
Check list??? Hint, hint, hint.
That Skyvan was quite an aircraft for us. Due to a stupid error, I have seen it carry a payload over 7600 pounds of lumber out of Bettles to a smaller private strip. The captain said it was a little "sluggish" on lift off. That's about 4,000 pounds over max gross for a 12,500 A/C on departure. I suspect the Twin Otter would do the same thing if asked to.
If a DC-2 1/2 (A DC-3 with a DC-2 wing on one side) can take off in the far east with 58 passengers, a well built aircraft can do anything with the right person in the left seat. A story about a 747 emergency evac with over 1000 (I believe close to 1050) passengers? Anyone know that story?
Government test with a Shorts Skyvan
At one point as director of cargo at Fairbanks, a government agency, agency name not important but not the FAA or NTSB, approached me and asked if we would help in a test. They wanted to load a VW Van in one of our Skyvans and than load the same van on one of our 737-210 QCs. They got the van on loan from the local VW dealer so one Sunday afternoon when each aircraft was available, we started on the project between normal scheduled flight operations. The Van would fit inside the Skyvan OK, proper tiedown was possible and the weight was within limits if the van was empty and of course the W&B on the 737 was OK.
The Feds would never tell me why the test but thanked the company for helping of course. Of course they didn't pay us anything so you guys saved tax money there. From some questions they asked, I figured it had something to do with foreign activity somehow and related to bush operations in many countries since they paid special attention to the landing gear on the Skyvan. As far as I know, Wien was the only US carrier at the time that had both the Skyvan and the 210 QCs. They had to have done some research to find us.
Low on fuel with a Porter, PC6
Working out of Dahl Creek, I had a backlog of mail and cargo for the town of Shungnak. I asked the Porter pilot, probably one of the best pilots I have ever met in my aviation life and who now lives in Kotzebue (you guys from OTZ and OME will know him but please don't post his name unless he says it is OK or ask him to join in), for a minimum fuel load so I could move as much as possible. After all, if it fits in a Porter, it will fly. He took it with fuel on board which he thought would be enough for the 20 mile round trip. After he got in the air and leveled off, the gauges were a little lower on quantity than he felt comfortable with so when he got to Shungnak, he bought 5 gal of car gas so he would feel more comfortable going back to Dahl Creek. That 5 gal was below the max amount of gas allowed to burn before having to report it to maint.
Overload of a Wien F-27A, P&W powered
At one point, a shipper brought in a load of lumber for a bush location, Bettles, serviced by our F-27s. The cargo receiving agent, kind of a lazy guy anyway, decided to weigh one piece of lumber and count the number of pieces. Might seem like a good idea until you understand that he chose a 2 x 4 to weigh and there were many, many 2 x 6s and 2 x 10 in the shipment. Our cargo crew loaded the F-27 with the entire shipment and off we go on an extra section flight with no passengers. As I recall, they got about half way down the runway before the captain shut it down and brought the aircraft back to our loading area. He said he couldn't get the nose off the ground on rotation. Maybe shift the load back a little or take some load off. As I recall, we took some weight off since it would be faster. He tried it again and the same thing so back it comes.
I was called up to the ramp were I started looking at paperwork first. It didn't take long to figure out why the problem happened. I suspect the aircraft was around 10,000 pounds over gross to start with. Since no gear came off the ground, we didn't have to go through the over gross landing check but the aircraft was still taken to the hanger and run through an indepth check. I was short two employees later that day at no great loss.
Race from Barrow to Fairbanks, C-46A against a 749 Connie.
Some aircraft can fly faster than the books say I guess. I did not hear this being talked about at Barrow before departure, but suspect two captains made a bet about who could get to Fairbanks the fastest. One was our 749 Connie, 7777G (story about that aircraft later) on a regular passenger flight which I was traveling on. The other was an empty C-46A (smaller engine than the normal supers). Both taxied out at the same time and the Connie departed first and the C-46 followed almost immediately, much like Wien flight 7777G, flight of two. I did not see the C-46 pass us but it was taxing in at Fairbanks when we landed the Connie. Remember, the Connie was probably the fastest commercial passenger aircraft in it's days.
I was told later that the C-46, good old 92853, went through a double engine change starting the next day. I know nothing....
Maintenance error-C-46A N92853
At a point, there was a company cargo flight in 1965 of drummed diesel for our power generator, drummed av gas, groceries for us and misc supplies. Great weather, for Umiat which at the time, was the only emergency airport on the entire north slope of Alaska and had to be open 24/7/365. Turnaround went great but on departure, they got a fire warning light in the right engine but looking back they couldn't see any problem so they pulled it back to idle and brought it back in. With the flight crew's help, I brought up a ladder and opened up that engine and what we found was unbelievable.
First of all, the C-46A only has 5 fire sensors compared to, I believe, 28 on the Supers. We found a broken wire on a sensor but no big deal there. While looking things over, we found the prop deicer line just laying on the engine case and pointed toward an exhaust stack. Anyone care to guess what would have happened if the flight crew had used that system in flight? We probably could have fixed everything easy but, as he should have, the captain got on our HF radio and called maintenance and the company had to fly in a couple of mechanics to attach the hose. Does anyone suspect the captain might have really been angry? By the way, the aircraft had just came out of maintenance just before the flight.
More on maintenance problems with aircraft later.
C-46, N92853, load of TNT
For the work in the mine shaft Kennecott Copper was working on at Bornite, they used a lot of dynamite and at one point, they had us fly in a shipment of 250 cases of dynamite in one trip. Shades of the huge explosion in North Korea recently, right? On departure out of Fairbanks, arrangements were made with the tower for using lights instead of any radios at all and there would be no communications enroute. Departure day was chosen based on reported weather and forecasts since the entire flight would have to be VFR with no NDB capability. Read: no radios. Off goes good old reliable 92853 again in search of another memory. Alaska would be in trouble today without that aircraft and those that flew it so well in the past and as far as I know, it is still flying to the bush out of Fairbanks. Much the same as good old C-46 Super, 60V (Sixty Volts as everyone called her)..our competitor, which is still parked in Fairbanks but beyond flying because of it's last trip. The final commercial flight of
C-46 60V into Prudhoe Bay will come up later.
About an hour or so after the flight left Fairbanks, my International crawler loader bought the dust so it was just me, a passenger loading ramp against 250, 50 pound cases of TNT.
Since I knew it was going to take a long time to offload, I sent the flight crew to our home where my wife fed them, steaks of all things. Once I got a feel of how long it would take, we fixed them up with a place to sleep so they could be legal to fly back. They offered to help offload of course as did all flight crews in the bush did all the time.
I tried carrying two cases at a time which was 100 pounds but so awkward it didn't work and I really didn't want to drop 50 pounds of TNT out of the aircraft door on the ground. So, it was like 250 times climbing up and down that passenger loading ramp, in the dark with no lights at all, with a guy that had already worked 20 hours straight. It took 7 hours to offload. Gee, what a guy will do for an employer he believed so much in and believing the life in the bush was worth everything we went through. I had parked the aircraft so he could swing the tail away from the stacked boxes of TNT enough to clear them as he made his taxied out. Only in the bush of Alaska. Try that at LAX or ORD.
Later, I was to offload the same aircraft at Dahl Creek with many loads of 153 bags of cement for the same mine shaft project of Kennecott. On those trips I had the use of my loader so I could just load the 100 pound bags on pallets, climb down and move them away. Anyone remember what the slope the C-46 has when parked? I got so tired walking up that cabin floor that I started carrying two bags at a time just to save the uphill walk. Temps, even with the emergency exit doors open, were around 90 degrees inside. We always had to be so very, very careful of cement dust getting into the cockpit. The cockpit door was sealed with tape as was the bulkhead between the cabin and the cockpit area. Plastic material was also covering the entire panel. Sure raises hell with instruments. While waiting for the crew to come back from fishing (I always handed them my fishing gear and pointed them to Dahl Creek just after they deplaned. I also offered my gold pan since there was lots of good flakes in the creek) my wonderful wife would meet me with a frosty ice cold cool one in a mug. (or two). A VP in FAI got word of what I was going on through so he started sending a Fairbanks cargo guy with the flight to help. Come to find out, with his help, it took 30 minutes longer to offload than by doing it myself so I got that stopped on the second load. Oh was I in good shape back than. It usually took an hour and ten minutes to offload 13,500 pounds and hand pump 110 gal of av gas. Our competitor flying a Super C-46 had their aircraft set up for pallet loading and I also offloaded it. We got their turnaround down to 7 minutes, block to block for 13,000 pounds.
Winter departure out of FAI Convair 880
A post elsewhere reminded me of this flight out of FAI in the winter.
An unnamed airline departed a Convair flight on a very cold winter day or night? (dark most of the time in the winter) and all went well until they got to about 1000 foot. There was such a temperature inversion (-40 on the ground and something like 32 above zero at 1000 foot) that the fuel control system could not keep up and all four flamed out. God gave the crew and their own ability enough time to relight all four and continue on with the flight after talking everything over with maintenance or at least I don't recall that they came back in for an inspection. That same aircraft had another problem, either on take off or go around out of FAI when it ended up with some tree branches in the gear. There were no pictures taken of the path through the tops of the trees on the departure end but several of our flight crews say they could see it easy. There was no apparent damage to the aircraft and all trees lived.
