Arctic Eagles Bid Mud Hens Farewell At Alaska Airlines
04-14-2007, 06:00 PM
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Arctic Eagles Bid Mud Hens Farewell At Alaska Airlines
Arctic Eagles Bid Mud Hens Farewell At Alaska Airlines
These Pilots Will Miss Their Banged-Up Boeings; Landing on the 10th Try
By SUSAN CAREY
WALL STREET JOURNAL
April 13, 2007; Page A1
ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- They called themselves the Arctic Eagles. For years, they flew Alaska Airlines passengers on the lonely routes from here to 20 remote outposts across the nation's largest state. With limited instruments and little air-traffic control, they faced blizzards, bear heads, gravel runways and volcanic eruptions.
But after 25 years, the Eagles are being disbanded.
It's the end of an era in commercial aviation. Alaska Airlines has retired the last of nine specially equipped 737-200 jets, that brought supplies from Anchorage to remote corners of the 49th state. Ed Crane narrates the story.
Alaska Air two weeks ago retired the last of its dedicated fleet of banged-up old Boeing 737-200s affectionately known as "mud hens." As the airline expands its routes, it is sending the roughly 60 pilots onto newer aircraft that they'll have to fly to California, Mexico and the East Coast as well as the Alaskan destinations.
Alaska is no longer their exclusive fief, either. Some of the airline's other pilots will be able to fly the Arctic routes as long as they're "checked out" on some of the most demanding airports.
Jet crews usually cheer the arrival of new equipment. But the Arctic Eagles lament the idea of manning aircraft that can land on automatic pilot. And many are not crazy about the prospect of flying to cities in the lower 48, where air-traffic controllers dictate their every move. They wax nostalgic about the stubby, noisy planes and the challenge and wonder of flying them up here in the frozen north.
"We were just a different breed of cat in Anchorage," says Capt. Kevin Earp, a 26-year veteran.
Once, Capt. Steve Rhodes, 44 years old, was heading south from Deadhorse above the Arctic Circle when he inadvertently flew into ash spewing from a volcano down below. "The cockpit smelled like rotten eggs and it got dark," he recalls. Volcanic dust can shut down jet engines, so he changed course and avoided trouble.
In Nome and Kotzebue, both located on Alaska's northwestern coast, high winds and snow squalls roll in from the Bering Sea -- conditions that are difficult even for the most experienced pilots. "When you get into Nome on the third shot, after going to Kotzebue to gas up and try again, people say, 'Thank you,' " says Capt. Terry Smith, a 28-year veteran of Alaska Air and chief pilot of the Anchorage base.
Years ago, Capt. Malcolm af Uhr, 45, co-piloted a flight headed for Juneau in a snow storm. He and his pilot, he recalls, aborted four attempts to land because they couldn't see the runway at the critical moment.
After refueling back in Sitka, 95 miles away, they returned to Juneau and tried to land five more times without success. As local fliers dozed or read the paper, a passenger from California stood and demanded, "What's wrong with you people?" The plane finally landed on the 10th try.
Way out in the Aleutian Island chain sits Dutch Harbor, a former U.S. Navy base with one of the trickiest airstrips anywhere. The short runway is surrounded on three sides by water and on the fourth by a mountain. A plane overshooting it could plummet straight into the drink, an outcome the pilots call the "40-fathom overrun."
Over a decade, Alaska Air says it operated more than 7,000 mud hen flights to Dutch Harbor, and never had any reportable incidents. Yet because of the difficulty landing there, service was unpredictable, so the airline stopped serving Dutch Harbor in 2004. Alaska Air still flies to other Aleutian locations.
Just the other day, Anita Davis, a flight attendant for Alaska Air for 27 years and married to a pilot, found herself and the crew grounded by nasty winds at Red Dog, an isolated zinc mine northwest of Kotzebue. The crew and passengers stayed at the mine dorm, sleeping while miners worked and clearing out when they returned. It wasn't at all awkward, Ms. Davis says, because "these people are some of my best friends."
Alaska Air was founded in Anchorage in 1932 and, now based in Seattle, is the nation's ninth-largest airline by traffic. But it still devotes more than 20% of its seats to its namesake state and its jets are emblazoned with the carrier's navy-and-teal logo of a smiling Eskimo.
Connecting towns that are inaccessible by road, the flights ferry groceries, plasma TVs, high-school teams, musher dogs, walrus meat and whale blubber, as well as prisoners, itinerant priests, dentists and oil workers. Once Alaska Air hauled a plane full of frozen Chicken McNuggets to Anchorage after local McDonald's stores ran out.
Jeff Munro, manager of cargo operations in Anchorage, says communities awaiting goods know what they want most. "Two things they ask us to prioritize -- beer and toilet paper," he jokes. "The groceries can wait."
Several years ago, Capt. Rhodes was flying a woman with a high-risk pregnancy from Nome when a flight attendant announced the baby's arrival "just this side of Galena," Capt. Rhodes recalls. Galena has a runway, but no hospital, so he flew on to Anchorage, where an ambulance waited. First, though, cargo containers carried in the mud hens' passenger cabins had to be unloaded so the mother and baby, both fine, could be lifted out through the freight door.
Pilots liked to tease out-of-state tourists by announcing the imminent crossing of the Arctic Circle. Just as the plane passed over the line, pilots goosed the controls to make the plane wobble, producing the "Arctic bump." The airline banned the practice after a passenger complained, but many pilots smile coyly when asked if they still do the bump.
Recently, a passenger boarded in Dillingham toting the head of a freshly killed black bear in a plastic grocery bag. Flight attendant Mary Jane Bridwell hid the memento -- "about the size of a large St. Bernard head" -- in a galley cupboard. When another attendant asked about an odor, Ms. Bridwell showed her the source. "She got very pale," says Ms. Bridwell, a 10-year Alaska Air veteran.
The mud hens were designed to land on short runways, and on gravel and ice. They guzzle gas and trail black smoke from their engines. Their cockpits lack the digital controls, advanced navigation aids and computerized maps that guide newer planes around mountains and other hazards. Passengers disembark from the rear on fold-out stairs.
Because of the tough conditions they faced, mud hen pilots had to endure rigorous training to learn to spot local landmarks, understand extreme weather conditions and perform landings with rudimentary airport beacons. "You pass that training program, you had a lot to be proud of," says Capt. Earp.
The newer 737s that the airline uses in the rest of its network and now is bringing to the 49th state have all the modern cockpit and passenger conveniences, and will make flying in rugged weather safer, the carrier says. Because the newer jets aren't designed to land on gravel, the landing strip at Red Dog had to be paved.
Although new route assignments will take the Anchorage-based pilots to sunny destinations like Cancún, Mexico, and Palm Springs, Calif., the pilots say they'll miss the old challenges and the camaraderie with crew members and local passengers.
Capt. af Uhr, who co-piloted that 10-approach flight to Juneau, says flying planes that get "food on the table in Nome" will always be more rewarding than "getting a bunch of irate people to Newark."
These Pilots Will Miss Their Banged-Up Boeings; Landing on the 10th Try
By SUSAN CAREY
WALL STREET JOURNAL
April 13, 2007; Page A1
ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- They called themselves the Arctic Eagles. For years, they flew Alaska Airlines passengers on the lonely routes from here to 20 remote outposts across the nation's largest state. With limited instruments and little air-traffic control, they faced blizzards, bear heads, gravel runways and volcanic eruptions.
But after 25 years, the Eagles are being disbanded.
It's the end of an era in commercial aviation. Alaska Airlines has retired the last of nine specially equipped 737-200 jets, that brought supplies from Anchorage to remote corners of the 49th state. Ed Crane narrates the story.
Alaska Air two weeks ago retired the last of its dedicated fleet of banged-up old Boeing 737-200s affectionately known as "mud hens." As the airline expands its routes, it is sending the roughly 60 pilots onto newer aircraft that they'll have to fly to California, Mexico and the East Coast as well as the Alaskan destinations.
Alaska is no longer their exclusive fief, either. Some of the airline's other pilots will be able to fly the Arctic routes as long as they're "checked out" on some of the most demanding airports.
Jet crews usually cheer the arrival of new equipment. But the Arctic Eagles lament the idea of manning aircraft that can land on automatic pilot. And many are not crazy about the prospect of flying to cities in the lower 48, where air-traffic controllers dictate their every move. They wax nostalgic about the stubby, noisy planes and the challenge and wonder of flying them up here in the frozen north.
"We were just a different breed of cat in Anchorage," says Capt. Kevin Earp, a 26-year veteran.
Once, Capt. Steve Rhodes, 44 years old, was heading south from Deadhorse above the Arctic Circle when he inadvertently flew into ash spewing from a volcano down below. "The cockpit smelled like rotten eggs and it got dark," he recalls. Volcanic dust can shut down jet engines, so he changed course and avoided trouble.
In Nome and Kotzebue, both located on Alaska's northwestern coast, high winds and snow squalls roll in from the Bering Sea -- conditions that are difficult even for the most experienced pilots. "When you get into Nome on the third shot, after going to Kotzebue to gas up and try again, people say, 'Thank you,' " says Capt. Terry Smith, a 28-year veteran of Alaska Air and chief pilot of the Anchorage base.
Years ago, Capt. Malcolm af Uhr, 45, co-piloted a flight headed for Juneau in a snow storm. He and his pilot, he recalls, aborted four attempts to land because they couldn't see the runway at the critical moment.
After refueling back in Sitka, 95 miles away, they returned to Juneau and tried to land five more times without success. As local fliers dozed or read the paper, a passenger from California stood and demanded, "What's wrong with you people?" The plane finally landed on the 10th try.
Way out in the Aleutian Island chain sits Dutch Harbor, a former U.S. Navy base with one of the trickiest airstrips anywhere. The short runway is surrounded on three sides by water and on the fourth by a mountain. A plane overshooting it could plummet straight into the drink, an outcome the pilots call the "40-fathom overrun."
Over a decade, Alaska Air says it operated more than 7,000 mud hen flights to Dutch Harbor, and never had any reportable incidents. Yet because of the difficulty landing there, service was unpredictable, so the airline stopped serving Dutch Harbor in 2004. Alaska Air still flies to other Aleutian locations.
Just the other day, Anita Davis, a flight attendant for Alaska Air for 27 years and married to a pilot, found herself and the crew grounded by nasty winds at Red Dog, an isolated zinc mine northwest of Kotzebue. The crew and passengers stayed at the mine dorm, sleeping while miners worked and clearing out when they returned. It wasn't at all awkward, Ms. Davis says, because "these people are some of my best friends."
Alaska Air was founded in Anchorage in 1932 and, now based in Seattle, is the nation's ninth-largest airline by traffic. But it still devotes more than 20% of its seats to its namesake state and its jets are emblazoned with the carrier's navy-and-teal logo of a smiling Eskimo.
Connecting towns that are inaccessible by road, the flights ferry groceries, plasma TVs, high-school teams, musher dogs, walrus meat and whale blubber, as well as prisoners, itinerant priests, dentists and oil workers. Once Alaska Air hauled a plane full of frozen Chicken McNuggets to Anchorage after local McDonald's stores ran out.
Jeff Munro, manager of cargo operations in Anchorage, says communities awaiting goods know what they want most. "Two things they ask us to prioritize -- beer and toilet paper," he jokes. "The groceries can wait."
Several years ago, Capt. Rhodes was flying a woman with a high-risk pregnancy from Nome when a flight attendant announced the baby's arrival "just this side of Galena," Capt. Rhodes recalls. Galena has a runway, but no hospital, so he flew on to Anchorage, where an ambulance waited. First, though, cargo containers carried in the mud hens' passenger cabins had to be unloaded so the mother and baby, both fine, could be lifted out through the freight door.
Pilots liked to tease out-of-state tourists by announcing the imminent crossing of the Arctic Circle. Just as the plane passed over the line, pilots goosed the controls to make the plane wobble, producing the "Arctic bump." The airline banned the practice after a passenger complained, but many pilots smile coyly when asked if they still do the bump.
Recently, a passenger boarded in Dillingham toting the head of a freshly killed black bear in a plastic grocery bag. Flight attendant Mary Jane Bridwell hid the memento -- "about the size of a large St. Bernard head" -- in a galley cupboard. When another attendant asked about an odor, Ms. Bridwell showed her the source. "She got very pale," says Ms. Bridwell, a 10-year Alaska Air veteran.
The mud hens were designed to land on short runways, and on gravel and ice. They guzzle gas and trail black smoke from their engines. Their cockpits lack the digital controls, advanced navigation aids and computerized maps that guide newer planes around mountains and other hazards. Passengers disembark from the rear on fold-out stairs.
Because of the tough conditions they faced, mud hen pilots had to endure rigorous training to learn to spot local landmarks, understand extreme weather conditions and perform landings with rudimentary airport beacons. "You pass that training program, you had a lot to be proud of," says Capt. Earp.
The newer 737s that the airline uses in the rest of its network and now is bringing to the 49th state have all the modern cockpit and passenger conveniences, and will make flying in rugged weather safer, the carrier says. Because the newer jets aren't designed to land on gravel, the landing strip at Red Dog had to be paved.
Although new route assignments will take the Anchorage-based pilots to sunny destinations like Cancún, Mexico, and Palm Springs, Calif., the pilots say they'll miss the old challenges and the camaraderie with crew members and local passengers.
Capt. af Uhr, who co-piloted that 10-approach flight to Juneau, says flying planes that get "food on the table in Nome" will always be more rewarding than "getting a bunch of irate people to Newark."
04-15-2007, 02:58 AM
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Originally Posted by HSLD
Arctic Eagles Bid Mud Hens Farewell At Alaska Airlines
These Pilots Will Miss Their Banged-Up Boeings; Landing on the 10th Try
These Pilots Will Miss Their Banged-Up Boeings; Landing on the 10th Try
A very different breed of pilots who are, I bet, great to belly up to the bar with.
04-15-2007, 03:01 AM
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They really are a different breed, I always viewed the group as bush pilots who fly jets. I had ample opportunity to jumpseat around the state with them while I lived in ANC - I always left with a lesson and a great tour.
04-15-2007, 09:41 AM
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Originally Posted by Brown757
Short final landing Kodiak.
But honestly I'm with the crowd that believes a pro pilot would know to initiate a G/A prior to the runway, instead of forcing it on knowing they probably wouldn't make it. It's what we're paid to do.Great article. One day I hope to do some sort of flying in Alaska. I've always felt I had more of a bush pilot mentality than any other, but unfortunately for me, were I live is about as flat as it gets!
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