Alaska plane crash kills 4, injures 6

[Captain_Anonymous]

Speaking about a bad flying season... http://www.crewstart.com/ubb/images/icons/frown.gif



NUIQSUT, Alaska (CNN) -- Four people died when a twin-engine Piper Cheyenne carrying nine passengers and a pilot crashed near Nuiqsut airport on Alaska's North Slope, officials said.

Six people suffered serious injuries in the Monday afternoon crash and were taken by helicopter to hospitals in Anchorage, Fairbanks and Barrow, said North Slope Borough Police Chief Paul Carr. None of the injuries appeared to be life-threatening, Carr said.

The identities of those killed were being withheld pending notification of kin.

INTERACTIVE POP-UP
Recent plane crashes



MESSAGE BOARD
Air safety



No one on the ground was injured. "It's just pretty much flat tundra here," Carr said, "No mountains or trees or anything like that."

No indication of cause of crash
"The assumption we're making is (the plane) was inbound for landing," said Carr. The plane crashed into the tundra near the village's runway and did not hit any buildings. There was no initial indication as to what may have caused the plane to crash, Carr said.

The plane was on a regularly scheduled commercial flight run by Cape Smythe Air Service of Barrow. It had taken off from Dead Horse, on Prudhoe Bay, and crashed about 3 p.m. (7 p.m. EDT).

Cape Smythe President Grant Thompson said the turbo aircraft left Dead Horse, about 65 miles east of Nuiqsut, at 2:45 p.m. He called the crash "devastating." He said he knew of no problems with the aircraft, but had not had time to check its service history.

Rescue crews from the North Slope Borough and the Nuiqsut Volunteer Fire Department went to the crash scene, near Prudhoe Bay. Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board were expected to arrive at the crash site on Tuesday.

Several Cape Smythe aircraft have had trouble
Nuiqsut is north of the Arctic Circle and about 150 miles east of Barrow. It is primarily an Eskimo community, though a new oil field development has brought others into the area, Carr said.

Several Cape Smythe Air planes have had mishaps this year.

In February, a Cape Smythe Air pilot was injured after his plane crashed on sea ice about three miles from the Kotzebue airport. On February 9, while landing at Wales, a Piper Cheyenne veered out of control while landing, causing minor injuries to eight passengers and a pilot.

In January, the pilot of a Piper 1040 landed in Savoonga without lowering his landing gear. No one was injured.

[RiverCity]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Arial, Verdana ">quote:<HR>From the Anchorage Daily News<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Four people were killed and six injured Monday afternoon when a commuter airplane crashed at the North Slope village of Nuiqsut.

Officials with the North Slope Borough Public Safety Department and the Federal Aviation Administration said the twin-engine Piper operated by Cape Smythe Air went down while trying to land at the village airstrip about 3 p.m.

Nuiqsut, with about 500 residents, sits on the open Arctic tundra about 60 miles west of Prudhoe Bay and about 35 miles from the Beaufort Sea coast. The plane had stopped in Deadhorse and was to make a stop in Nuiqsut on its way to Barrow.

Two who died, identified by authorities late Monday, were from Anchorage: Chris Gibson and Gerald Kost. The other two were pilot Leo "Jason" Ostendorf and Kenneth Leavitt, both of Barrow.

While none of the dead were from Nuiqsut, "We feel just as much for their families," Mayor Leonard Lampe said.

Two eyewitnesses said the plane approached the runway without lowering its landing gear.

The aircraft seemed to touch the gravel runway at the edge of town, then regain altitude before banking and hitting the tundra, said Jim Allen, a 57-year-old heavy-equipment operator who was waiting with his mother to catch the plane to Barrow.

"The plane touched down with no wheels," Allen said. "I saw him touch the ground, and I could even see the dust, but he didn't stay (down) long."

Rosemary Ahtuangaruak, a Nuiqsut city employee who also was at the airstrip, said she heard someone yell that the plane was descending with its landing gear up.

"That's when I noticed it," Ahtuangaruak said. "It attempted to touch down without the landing gear. Then it went back up, and as it started to climb, it put the landing gear down."

That matches Allen's description. "Fifteen to 20 feet (up), I could see the wheels come out," Allen said. "And as he was going up he started banking and kept on banking until he hit the tundra."

Ahtuangaruak estimated the plane rose as high as 100 feet before diving into the ground.

Allen said that, while he did not see the plane hit the ground, he knew it crashed because "it started to smoke right away."

"It was pretty shocking, you know. I have never seen anything like it."

North Slope Borough Police Chief Paul Carr said his agency was advised a few minutes after 3 p.m. that the plane had crashed just west of the airstrip. It burst into flames on impact.

Allen and other Nuiqsut residents said the weather was partly cloudy, with temperatures in the mid-30s. "There was nothing remarkable about the weather," Carr said.

Grant Thompson, president of the Barrow-based airline, said the Piper 1040 carried a pilot and nine passengers. He said he knew of no problems with the aircraft. He described the crash as "devastating."

North Slope Borough rescue crews and the Nuiqsut Volunteer Fire Department responded. Phillips Alaska Inc. dispatched medical personnel from the company's oil-field operations to assist, company spokeswoman Dawn Patience said.

The injured, according to the North Slope police, were: Greg Noble, Mark Reardon and Shawn Morgan, all of Anchorage, Ed Sanford of Fairbanks, Susie Napageak of Nuiqsut and Steve Hastings of Barrow.

They were treated at the Nuiqsut clinic then flown to hospitals in Barrow, Fairbanks and Anchorage. Their injuries were serious -- broken bones and cuts -- but not life-threatening, Carr said.

Investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board were expected to fly to Nuiqsut today.

Monday's crash was the ninth accident involving a Cape Smythe aircraft in the past five years, and the 12th in the past decade. No one died in any of the other incidents, however.

This is the latest in a series of serious aircraft accidents on the North Slope. A total of 13 people died in two crashes of planes operated by another North Slope carrier, Hageland Aviation, in 1997.

[RiverCity]

I just posted this over on PPRuNe. It's from the Anchorage Daily News for (today) Saturday, Sept. 23. <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Arial, Verdana ">quote:<HR>Six months ago, the FAA told the North Slope air carrier whose plane was involved in Monday's fatal crash that the company should use two pilots instead of one whenever flying that kind of aircraft. That was one of 11 recommendations made in a report on Cape Smythe Air Service, a copy of which was obtained by the Daily News on Friday. Many of the recommendations advise better supervision of pilots and more comprehensive pilot training.
In its report, which followed an in-depth inspection last winter, the agency noted a pattern of accidents when a particular plane -- a Piper PA-31-T3, or 1040 -- was flown by a single pilot taking off or landing.
Monday's accident, which killed four people and injured six, involved the same type of turboprop-driven Piper 1040, with a one-pilot crew. The plane crashed while trying to land at Nuiqsut airport, about 135 miles east of Barrow.
"This particular company seems to be having a problem operating this plane with one pilot," said Hugh McLaughlin, assistant manager of the FAA's Fairbanks district, in a phone interview Friday. The FAA report noted a half-dozen previous incidents involving Piper 1040s flown by a single Cape Smythe pilot, some of which caused injuries, none fatal. "The inspection team recommends that the company change its crew complement in PA-31 aircraft from a single pilot to a two-pilot crew," the report states.
The report concluded that Cape Smythe, which has been operating in Arctic and Northwest Alaska for more than 23 years, had several "root safety" problems, had insufficient procedures to assign pilots to particular planes and flights, and inadequate oversight and training of pilots.
Investigators with the NTSB and the FAA were still checking evidence from Monday's crash and had not yet determined a cause. Eyewitness accounts, however, were all "pretty consistent" that the Piper touched down on Nuiqsut's gravel runway without its landing gear extended, said NTSB inspector Scott Erickson. A similar incident occurred in January in Savoonga when the pilot forgot to deploy the Piper's landing gear. The plane -- the exact same aircraft -- landed safely on its belly, and neither the pilot nor the two passengers were injured. "We believe a second pilot would have put the gear down on the Savoonga gear up incident," the FAA inspection report states.
On Feb. 9, a pilot who had been qualified to fly a scheduled passenger flight in the Piper 1040 under instrument flight rules just two weeks earlier, was assigned to fly into Wales at the tip of the Seward Peninsula. "Upon arrival at Wales," the FAA report states, "the pilot did not accurately evaluate wind and weather conditions and crashed." The pilot and another person were injured. "A second pilot . . . may have provided the second opinion on conditions needed to initiate a go around in a timely manner," the report says. The Piper 1040 that crashed Monday was piloted by Leo Jason Ostendorf, who died in the crash, authorities said. Ostendorf had been employed by Cape Smythe for "a couple of years," Thompson said earlier this week. In that interview, Thompson said the Piper 1040 is certified for a single pilot. He and other officers of Alaska air carriers have complained about a shortage of qualified pilots in Alaska as pilots are drawn to more lucrative opportunities elsewhere. "We've lost four to five people in the last four to five months," he said last fall. "It's very serious," said John Eckles of Arctic Transportation Services, president of the Alaska Air Carriers Association. "Those available or applying are low-time pilots."<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> RiverCity