The Yupik People deserve better than low time pilots flying 50 - 60 year old 207s around...You can romanticize all you want about it, it is pure stupidity. The YK Delta produces some of the worst icing conditions and low IFR weather on the West Coast. You have a moisture laden marine climate meeting a very cold continental air mass. Let’s put our elders and mothers with children into VFR only, no anti-ice equipped, worn out sleds, with low time pilots, so they can build time and get a better job someplace else....If they survive...I can only hope that people will not continue to be this stupid...We have witnessed enough carnage already.
You make valid points. Some outfits will really push the wx, but speaking objectively, I saw that a whole lot more in JNU than in BET. When I was at Hageland I felt no pressure to accept flights, and turned down flights when conditions seemed sketchy. But not everyone did, and there certainly were accidents that appear to have been avoidable. Interestingly, though, when I do a quick mental inventory of accidents before, during, and after my time in the Delta an awful lot of them were with pilots that were quite experienced.
We had good check airmen and good experienced pilots who were happy to share tribal knowledge that was aimed at keeping us out of trouble.
The planes weren’t beautiful, but generally were in good condition. The sleds were mostly ‘80s vintage, so that would make them 40 years old, not 60. And being unpressurized and rebuilt with some regularity, they were in pretty decent shape. Yes, some of the Grant planes were grounded due to record keeping or condition, and some of the Yute planes acquired by Hageland were beaters that got parted out. So not all the planes were as well kept as, say, the Bering Air planes. The Capstone I installations were very useful in many regards. They had UAT wx, which is very helpful, terrain, radar, and good moving maps. Most of the planes had Capstone equipment, and most of the time it was in working order.
It wasn’t a perfect system, but between the improved avionics, improved attitudes about not pushing wx, implementation of an Operational Control Center where you pretty much had to convince the dispatcher of the safety of the flight, better runways, AWOS, and wx cams there were a lot of things being done to make it safer.
Right now there are some new operators in the Y-K Delta, and I don’t know the specifics of their operations. But from what I understand, some of their people are quite experienced and not the type to push their luck. I don’t know all the pilots flying out there right now by any stretch of the imagination, and there may be some who are sketchy. But I don’t think they all are.
Bottom line: it’s not perfect, but it’s not terrible, either.