A friend of the family worked seasonally for Taquan after being captain of 747’s with Evergreen Air during the last Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. Not having a bachelors degree really limited the commercial airline jobs for him despite thousands of hours in the left seat so as the war wound down and Evergreen was laying everyone off he flipped houses in the fall and winter and flew and fished out of KTN during the spring and summer. His wife, my wife’s friend, took a leave of absence and went up to dispatch flights for their close friends, the owners of Taquan during the summer. He had his own opinions about certain pilots but said that the company was very safety oriented especially after the accident several years back. Thankfully he took a job with Horizon and will likely be getting back into the bigger jets at AK airlines since they dropped the bachelor degree requirement. The last flight was on Island Air in a Caravan. I always introduce myself to the pilot and when I did I asked him how old he was and if he’d graduated from high school yet. 😁. He was 23 but looked 17 and did a fine job. He had been flying since he was 15 which on the surface seemed good but when I used my fingers and toes for the math I realized that the wranglers and Romeos I were wearing were bought before he started flying.
Back in the mid ‘50’s my father in law flew his first paying passengers from Anchorage to Kodiak at 14 years old. Before the FAA and all the rules and regulations and silly stuff like pilot licenses were implemented. He flew for a couple years for Air America mostly C-47’s and Pilatus Porters before they required him to go to Florida to get his pilots license. The government used him to see how deep he could get in and around Cuba while “getting his time in”. He was too young to realize he was the canary in the coal mine plus he was having a blast and didn’t care anyway, he was like a lot of us when we’re young, dumb and invincible.
The last couple of times heading from KTN to POW I took Island Air since they fly Cessna caravans IFR instead of Beavers into Thorne Bay or the Cove. Far more reliable flying IFR in that area than VFR but not as convenient as landing 2 blocks from the property in a Beaver. I’m not a huge fan of flying but weirdly enough once I’m in Alaska and flying in small aircraft I’m more at ease in the smaller planes simply because if that’s the way I’m called home at least I’ll have met my God in a place that I always feel the closest to him and in a place that I love. Crashing in a 737, or worse yet, an Airbus over Bakersfield or Houston is my nightmare. Overall I just like getting up and down safely and hopefully I’ll continue to do so until I die in 40 or 50 years after a passionate evening with my wife. 😁
God bless all those families affected by the crashes. I can’t imagine the grief and sadness that the owners and employees of Taquan are feeling. I’m amazed though that there aren’t even more crashes in the KTN area with all the smaller aircraft that aren’t modernized with proximity indicators and all the other fancy electronics that might’ve prevented the Beaver versus Otter midair.
