I always planned with the boss, hey I"m flying to AK. Means I might get to the field 5 days latter than planned. I might get out 5 days later... I might miss flights, IE if I'm not back on Monday, I'll call you when I can... which might be a week later... just fyi.
Having to be in a hurry, IMHO, is what kills folks in a plane in AK. And other places.
We took off once, on floats, on a rough and ok sized lake... we had to do a couple loops to get enough of the plane up and on plane, burned who knows how much fuel, and finally get a run into the wind to get up, and get as much altitude as we could, so we could drop the nose and turn, to gain even more speed, so we could fly the 180 degree turn back out again. Glad the pilot knew what he was doing.
And on a similar instance, we had low ceilings off dirt... easy path out of mountains down a river... we were heavy, got up just enough to get over the trees, and then slid back down into the river to fly it out until we lost the low ceiling.
I put my trust in those guys. They did not let me down.
I would not have flown in either case myself.
Being in a hurry is not a good reason to move to AK or to live in AK. Tommorrow is always there. If you aren't dumb.
