Alaska plane crashes?

[gracekelley]

My husband and I were watching CNN last night and there was a story that a flightseeing plane had crashed and killed the family of 4 on board. About two weeks ago there was another story regarding another crash. Are these common? We are pondering a floatplane excursion but not sure now...I am not a fan of flying anyway but was going to do it for the beauty of it all...any info or feedback on the crashes? Thanks all, Grace

[tadjr]

I havent seen any unusually high number of crashes with sightseeing planes in Alaska. If there had been, the media would have been all over it. On the other hand, the plane is mechanical and sometimes weather is involved so you can never say never, but I wouldnt be overly concerned. If you want to check out information, you can go to the FAA website and see whats happened in the past 10 days. Remember though that these numbers are for ALL planes in the entire US. Sometimes they may look high, but we're talking thousands of planes with many more flights a day. You can look at the data and it will list where the plane was (so you take just Alaska flights into consideration) and it sometimes lists what happened if known. You can get more info from this website, but this is just a prelim report page for the past 10 days.

http://www.faa.gov/avr/aai/iirform.htm

 

I wouldnt worry about it personally. You'll probably have a better chance of getting hurt getting to/from the ship in a car or van.

[Krazy Kruizers]

:)

 

Don't worry about it. This happened a couple of years when a couple of the small planes crashed.

Take the flight and enjoy the scenery. It gorgeous.

:)

[cruise pup]

The bush pilots in Alaska are some of the best aviators in the world. With the harsh weather in Alaska, they are used to extreme conditions. They are also very calm people and are very sensitive to the fact that they carry a lot of nervous passengers. I was one of them, but I had a marvelous time and couldn't believe how smooth the flight was and I managed to sit back, relax and enjoy that breathtaking scenery. In fact, I cancelled a flightseeing trip on my first cruise to Alaska and I regret not taking it as it supposedly was wonderful.

[Yukon]

Grace - both the crash 2 weeks ago, and the one 2 days ago were private pilots (the latest was even in a borrowed plane). Private pilots crash with appalling regularity here - commercial pilots are in a very different league. Have fun!

 

Murray

[Coral]

Someone correct me if I am wrong - but doesn't Alaska have more private pilots per capita than any other state?

[gracekelley]

Thanks for the information and the encouragement. We are still talking about taking a floatplane or glacier flight if one is available and I don't chicken out!! I know this will be one of the highlights of our life so I want to take advantage of all it offers....Grace

[Gardyloo]

Someone correct me if I am wrong - but doesn't Alaska have more private pilots per capita than any other state?

 

Yes, and more planes.

[kkorman]

Someone correct me if I am wrong - but doesn't Alaska have more private pilots per capita than any other state?

 

Yes, I saw many houses with runways as driveways on my train ride from ANC to Whittier! And the floatplanes are necessary to travel outside of Juneau.