Category: Alaska

Since I was picking up an extra shift in Bethel, I was effectively the company tampon. With the pilot shortage the company has been paying extremely well to work extra as our company is bleeding all over the place. Being the company tampon, I spend my 2 weeks in Bethel going wherever the bleeding was the worst. While most pilots hate being sent from place to place, I couldn’t have been happier packing my sleeping bag each night, exploring more of Alaska and meeting new people.

I started in Bethel, saw copilot “Sexy Deroberts” walking around like a lost puppy on the ramp so I cat called him over to my plane to begin our budding romance. Ryan was a Marine as well so we became half-tards and walked around saying things like, “Errah,” and being general dirtbags.

We both worked on growing our beards and with our Marine Corps work ethic we crushed a lot of flying, in and out of the growing clouds.

Each shift always seems to give me some new unexpected firsts and this shift threw a passenger sh*tt*ng their pants during flight at me. He at least had the courtesy to do it about 5 minutes before landing. Deroberts looked at me and said something like, “I think our passenger shit their pants.” I then replied with, “I think I smell popcorn.” A moment later I got the most vile wave of thick warm excrement passing through the cockpit. One thing to note is that in the caravan there is no separation between the pilots and the passengers. We could smell EVERYTHING. I soldiered on and coming in to land I was gagging while putting in full rudder on a rough steep crosswind into Mekoryuk airport. We did a highspeed taxi into the ramp, opened the door and sent our passenger poopwalking to his truck. We then unloaded the planes cargo which was right next to the wet stained seat. We gagged and unloaded and gagged more until the plane was empty. We took the seat out, put it under the plane and prepared ourselves to burn it later.

Bethel was my first base in Alaska so it will forever have a place in my heart. Our presence there as an airline can only be described as cutting 100 chicken’s heads off and then throwing some turbine-driven, jet fuel burning aircraft in the mix and hoping passengers and cargo somehow find their way to where they are trying to go. Very few pilots want to work in Bethel, but I think some of my favorite people on earth work there, so I was happy to work an extra shift there.

After a bit in Bethel, they sent me to Unalakleet and I got my first experiences flying around there. The area is gorgeous like Kotzebue, on the ocean, and the people I worked with there were nothing short of extremely pleasant. 

The company then had me pack my bags and head to St Mary’s for a few days on my way back to Bethel. Saint Mary’s can be distinguished by the fact that it is just an enormous pilot of dust that turns into mud when it rains. We walk around like pigsty from Charley brown when it’s dry and hardly drag our muddy boots through the sludge when it rains. As a whole St. Mary’s is dreary with some of the worse weather in Alaska, where for weeks at a time you can’t see your hands in front of your face and 30-40 knot crosswinds are standard procedure.

Alaska is rough, it’s probably the most blue collar flying job you’ll find in the world. It’s dangerous and I spend enormous amounts of time with my white knuckles stretching to pop out of my skin. But I’m still there for a few reasons. For one, the scenery it absolutely gorgeous. Each day brings us new weather, animal migrations, and hours of flying without seeing a single sign of human below. But the number one reason why I keep coming back is for the people. Here are just a few of the lovely characters of the Bethel pilot house.

I finally finished my shift in Bethel. At this point I had worked 33 days in a row, and would have to work just 15 more in Kotzebue before I could get on that sweet sweet freedom jet.

After a month in Barrow and a quick trip to Peru, I shipped off to Kotzebue, Alaska, my new “permanent” pilot base. Kotzebue’s native name is,
Qikiqtaġruk. Good luck pronouncing that. Kotzebue is ethnically Inupiat. I was scheduled to fly 18 days, but since I was burnt out on travelling, it was the best time of year to fly, and I wanted to grow my beard out I picked up an extra shift in Bethel which would make it 46 days in a row working in bush Alaska.

We have 5 planes scheduled to run at any one time in Kotzebue, 3 caravans and 2 navajos. So we have 5 pilots to fly those planes. Most recently the captains have been me, Zac, Sam, Andy, and Brent. We stay at the pilot house and spend 24/7 together. It is quite rare for there to be an issue between the pilots as we are all inherently relaxed people.

The entire 18 days in Kotzebue were nothing but sunshine and good vibes. There were no flights in billowing clouds, no icing, and no approaches down into the grimey bush tundra. 

My copilot Jake and I worked our little pilot butts off and flew over 100 hours and delivered countless metric tons of pop to the surrounding villages. We also delivered all of our passengers safely and (mostly) happily.

However, being bush Alaska, we got to fly our fair share of whacked out passengers and got to play, “drunk, or just that way?” most days with help from the girls behind the counter. As pilots we cannot legally take passengers that are intoxicated so if we figure that they are we leave them behind for them to sober up. We carried a stab victim and caught countless bags stacked with drugs and booze being shipped to the villages. In Alaska it is illegal to have alcohol in a lot of the smaller villages so people can buy a $10 bottle in Anchorage and sell it for upwards of $300 if they can get it to the village.

One very defining feature around the Kotzebue area are the, “Gread Kobuk Sand Dunes.” They are enormous dunes seemingly in the middle of nowhere, formed by the glaciers of the last ice age. They are the largest active dunes in the arctic.

Because planes break sometimes there was a good 2 days in the middle of shift where I had the only working plane, so I flew from sunup to sundown grinding for the people of Alaska.

My favorite destination around Kotzebue is Red Dog Mine. We fly the miners in and out of the zinc mine there on charters and they give up donuts when we stop in!

Towards the end of my stint in Kotzebue, the clouds started forming, we had our first dusting of snow, and I was happy to head down further south to Bethel to continue my 46 days of work.