It was a very busy summer of flying. There was not much attention being paid to duty times and daily flight hours.
I was flying the coast mail run almost daily from Cordova to Icy Bay, 150 miles down the coast with a stop at
Yakataga about half way between. It was the 30th of July 1979. There had been a huge amount of bypass mail for the
logging camp at Icy Bay. Bypass mail consists mainly of groceries, soda pop, and other heavy or bulky store-bought
items. Bypass mail goes directly to the carrier, bypassing the post office, and is a postal courtesy for the state of
Alaska, implemented to inexpensively service remote Alaskan villages, camps and outposts. I was sick with the
flu and had a painful tooth ache, but was flying anyway and got socked with three round trips to Icy Bay. It was an
all-day ordeal, but the weather was blue-sky sunny and warm. My airplane for the day was a Beaver on wheels. For each
round trip to Icy Bay, I filled the front, middle and rear tanks which at about 23 gallons per hour, gave me 95 gallons
for the 3-plus hour flight...plenty of reserve.
I had flown this route many times through the fall, winter and spring in all kinds of wind and weather. My fuel
management techniques had become routine and standardized in accordance with the load, wind and any potential course
deviation due to weather. My loads and the prevailing easterly wind this day dictated burning off the 25 gallon rear
tank first, switching to the middle tank about an hour into the flight and then to the front tank about half way back
to Cordova.
On my third trip, the wind had switched to westerly, providing me with a tail wind from Cordova to Icy Bay. The west
wind was brisk and I didn't have to switch to the middle tank until final approach to the Icy Bay landing strip. Some
of the logging camp crew came out to meet me and we unloaded the plane into a pickup truck. As we unloaded, the wind
switched back to easterly and I departed for Cordova with a tail wind. I landed there at about 7:00 P.M., tired, sick,
still with a bad tooth ache and truly grateful to be home and done for the day.
I walked into the office to turn in the required paperwork and Gail, the dispatcher said, much to my disbelief,
"Jay, you have one more flight to take." You need to take a 55 gallon barrel of jet fuel to the landing strip at
Katella. How much fuel do you need?" Needless to say, I was not happy about this turn of events and was plunged
immediately into a state of mind which could be euphemistically described as 'really grumpy.' I shot back at her,
"I don't need any fuel, I've got a full front tank. Let's load the barrel so I can get going." Maybe 'really grumpy'
is not the right description. My state of mind was a lot worse than that. I had flown ten hours already and been on
duty for 14 hours.
We loaded the barrel. The wind was virtually calm. There had been no turbulence coming or going all day long.
Katella was about 25 minutes to the east on the coast along the same route that I had been flying all day. I was in a
hurry, pissed off, sick, exhausted, in pain, and wanted to launch as quickly as possible, so we rolled the barrel up
the barrel ramp through the back door of the Beaver and stood it up on its bottom end behind the pilot's seat with
just a strap to keep it from sliding aft on takeoff.
I took off from the Cordova Municipal strip and checked the fuel gauges. The rear tank was empty, the middle tank
was almost empty and the front tank was full. In my dysfunctional state of mind I decided not to climb any higher
than 300 feet, figuring that it was a waste of time. So at three hundred feet, I levelled off and headed straight
for Katella.
The flight would take me across the Copper River about 5 miles upstream from the mouth. The river mouth is about 30
miles wide, and defined at the mouth by several ocean entrances, separated by long sand bars and sandy grassy islands.
The river is extremely silty with several glaciers grinding rock off of the mountains which form the Copper River
Canyon a few miles upstream .
I once again looked at the fuel gauges and saw the needle for the front-tank fuel quantity indicator coming off the
FULL peg. In that gorgeous late afternoon Alaskan summer light I flew over the west side of the Copper River flats.
The light of the low sun was directly behind me. The shadows were long. Directly ahead the Ragged Mountain Range was
glowing in that late light. I would be rounding the end of those mountains where they meet the ocean, and then landing
just beyond that first point...Martin Point. My dark mood began to subside in that gorgeous light...the colors...the
vista ahead.
Ten minutes into the flight, still at 300 feet, the west shoreline of the main channel of the Copper River was just
a couple of miles ahead. In flying various specific routes over the years, there are always particular spots along any
route that become personal in-flight milestones. On flights down the coast from Cordova, the west edge of the Copper
was one of these for me. Martin Point was the next milestone and there were several more beyond that, all the way to
Icy Bay.
I cruised out beyond the west shoreline.
From my position at that moment, about 5 miles upstream from the mouth, there were about 10 of miles of river width to
cross. The east shoreline was a few miles ahead when the engine quit. I looked at the front-tank fuel gauge and at
the fuel-tank-selector valve handle. The tank showed full, the fuel valve handle was pointing straight up...front
tank in my mind then.
I jiggled the wobble pump up and down and got the engine re-started briefly. Then there was no longer any fuel in
the wobble pump and it just clacked up and down uselessly. I radioed off a mayday on 123.6, the frequency for the
then-manned Cordova flight service station. Someone responded with an urgent but unintelligible reply, and I radioed
back to tell him I was landing in the river near Cotton Wood Point.
I was down to about 100 feet with a 55 gallon barrel of Jet-A standing on the floor directly behind my seat. I
didn't want to get crushed by the barrel so my instinct was to land in the deepest available part of the river as slow
and nose-up as possible so that the floor would take most of the impact of the barrel during the probable sudden stop.
At about 20 feet above the river with 40 degrees of flaps, I pulled up and stalled into the river in an extreme nose-up
attitude with a somewhat rapid vertical speed. Skaaaploosh...the airplane landed tail first but quickly plunged nose
down and flipped gently over, tail first, upside down.
I heard the barrel slamming around behind me, but it never made any hard contact with the back of my seat. There
was still daylight showing through the windshield and side windows as the Beaver floated belly-up with its tail facing
downstream. Still hanging upside down from my seat belt, I glanced once more at the fuel valve selector handle in its
straight up position. Then it dawned on me...! I had never switched to the front tank on the last flight back from
Icy Bay. The middle tank was still selected and the engine had quit because I had run the tank dry.
In a Beaver the three fuel quantity indicator gauges are arranged with middle and rear side-by-side, front on top.
The fuel-valve-selector handle has three on positions. The rear and front-tank positions are to either side and
with the middle tank selected, the handle is pointing straight up. The three on positions of the fuel-valve
handle do not correspond to the three positions of the fuel-quantity gauges. With about 1500 hours in Beavers at that
time, I was aware of this inconsistency, but, that handle pointing straight-up corresponded (in my dysfunctional state
of mind) with the position of the front-tank-fuel-quantity gauge. There hanging from my seatbelt upside down in the
river, my mistake totally dawned on me. In that moment of grim realization, I muttered, "oh shit," grabbed the life
jacket out of the door pocket, braced my left hand against the cabin roof, undid my seat belt, eased myself down to the
ceiling and opened the door.
I was wet only with jet fuel. The barrel bung had burst open during the impact. The airplane was floating upside
down and heading tail first toward the open ocean. I got out onto the underside of the left wing, still dry. The
airplane started to rotate nose down into the water. As it did, I scrambled around the trailing edge of the wing
trying to avoid getting dunked. The Copper River is extremely cold even in the middle of the summer due to several
glaciers up stream.
The plane slowly flipped back to right-side-up and I was standing between the wings directly above the cockpit,
still high and dry. But, this was a fleeting perch. The nose began to sink again. I ran up to the tail along the
back of the fuselage to try and prevent the plane from flipping back over again. As I stood on the left horizontal
stabilizer clinging to the vertical stablizer, the tail began to go down. I thought to myself, "I don't want to sink
into this cold river." But the airplane was filling with silty river water and slowly sinking. I didn't know how deep
the water was and when the tail went under with me on it, I let go and began a cold downstream journey with the
inflated life jacket holding my head out of the water. So down stream we floated...the Beaver going through very slow
oscillations of nose-up nose-down and slowly diverging away from me. I was pretty convinced that it was going to sink
out of sight when I made the decision to let go. Had I thought it would run aground and still remain partially visible,
I would have stayed with it.
After floating down stream several hundred yards my feet brushed the bottom. I tried to dig my heels in, but the
current swept me on. A few hundred yards further, my feet touched the bottom again and this time I was able to dig my
heels in and bring myself to a stop against the current. About five hundred feet to the west of me, the Beaver had run
aground with just the wings and vertical stablizer showing above the water. I stood there in the river, which at that
point is several miles wide. There was no nearby shoreline. Water was rushing over my shoulders and around the back
of my neck. It was really cold. There was no dry land within reach, so I decided that staying put would be the best
bet because the plane was nearby and was a bright yellow color against the grey silty waters of the river and could be
easily seen from a search plane. So I stood there hoping that someone was headed out to find me.
Soon there were several curious harbor seals around me looking at me with their faces out of the water. They
actually helped to dispel the loneliness, but didn't appear willing to help in any way. They stayed around for only a
few minutes and then disappeared. I stood there in that cold river all alone and thought over and over again, "Send help."
After about 10 minutes I heard a distant airplane go by far to the north. I looked back that way and recognized the
plane as belonging to a friend from Cordova, but he was too far away to see me. Another 10 minutes went by and I could
feel the effects of hypothermia beginning to set in. Instinctively I had kept my legs tightly together and my arms
tight to my sides to prevent heat loss through the femoral and brachial arteries, but I could tell that I wasn't going
to last very long in that cold cold water.
Once again I heard an airplane coming and looked up to see a Chitna Air Service Cessna 185 on wheels headed directly
toward me. Keeping my armpits closed tight, I raised my arms only from my elbows and waved at them. They rocked
their wings and circled me a few times, but of course they couldn't land anywhere. At least someone knew where I was
and maybe a float plane was on its way. Another ten minutes went by and now I could feel my consciousness beginning to
subside. I wasn't sure how much longer I could hold out...maybe ten more minutes. I was becoming really fuzzy-headed
and starting to withdraw inwardly when I heard the sound of a helicopter headed my way. It was Jack Chisum in a Bell
Jet Ranger on pontoons. He settled onto the water nearby, but had to maintain rotor rpm as he taxied over to me.
There was another guy sitting in the right seat, one of Jack's ramp rats. I tried to boost myself up onto the float
with just my arms, but didn't have the strength at that point. So I threw one leg up over the skid and rolled up onto
the skid/float. In the meantime, the ramp rat guy just sat there watching me, never opened the door or nothing. I was
so cold that my thinking was impaired and I couldn't figure out how to open the back door of the Jet Ranger. It had a
flush mounted push-button about an inch and a half across. I couldn't see it. Finally the guy in the right front seat
opened his door, reached back and opened the back door.
I crawled in soaking wet and colder than I have ever been in my life. I was so cold that I just wanted keep my eyes
closed and think about standing in front of the heater at Chisum's office. Every now and then as we flew toward Cordova,
I would glance out the window to see how close we were to arriving. We finally settled onto the helipad at Chism Flying
Service. I was so ready for that office heater, but no...instead there was an ambulance standing by. I was immediately
bundled into the ambulance and hot packs, normally used for physical therapy, were placed all around me. When we arrived
at the hospital, they continued to warm me up until I actually felt warm again. At that point they inserted a rectal
thermometer and my core temperature registered at 91 degrees. They made me stay in the hospital over night because
apparently when recovering from severe hypothermia, erratic heart beats can develop. So they wanted to keep an eye on me.
That evening, Jim, my boss, the owner of Chitna Air Service, came to the hospital to see me. "What happened, Jay?"
I told him that I had run a tank dry and didn't realize it until I was upside down in the water. He said, "I'm glad
you told me that. If you had told me anything else you wouldn't have a job. Come back to work when you're back on
your feet again."
This was another lesson learned the hard way and I came out of it smelling like a rose, still alive.
For some unknown reason the insurance company for the Beaver refused to take any kind of action to recover the
plane. There was a goofy character in town who had salvaged a 45 foot shallow-draft power scow. It had washed up near
Cape Suckling in an early spring storm. The captain of a Blackstone tug towing two huge barges and two power scows had
found himself trying to make headway against 50 foot seas and 100+ knot winds just east of Kayak Island down the coast
from Cordova. The tug was being blown backwards in the heavy weather and the skipper had no choice but to cut loose
the load he was towing.
The goofy guy in town, with my help and a Chitna Air Service airplane, took a small crew down to Cape Suckling to
re-float the power scow. By cutting timbers for rollers and with jacks, come-alongs, and a little help from a couple
of high tides, he was able to float the power scow and motor it to Cordova. Inspite of his insistence that he could
get up the river to the plane and bring it back to town, the insurance company wouldn't go for it.
I continued to fly the Coast mail run and the yellow Beaver remained in that spot for many weeks as a monument to
my folly. It slowly disappeared as it was sanded in by the relentless silt from the river.
The lessons learned from this misadventure are obvious. Don't fly when you're sick, exhausted and in pain. Don't
exceed the maximum daily duty time and flight hours authorized under FARs Part 135. Fly at a reasonable altitude. If you're in a really black grumpy
mood, get over it before you fly. Adhere to proper fuel management procedures. Tie down your load. Review emergency
procedures on a regular basis. Avoid crossing bodies of water at an altitude too low to reach land if the engine quits.
And switching tanks is usually the first appropriate action to take in the event of an engine failure.
