The Stranded Pilot by Russ Pederson Atqasuk, AK 99791



On March 6, 2007, I arrived at work and my boss, Mel, introduced me to Ken and said “find out what he needs to repair a flat tire on his plane and see if you can find it.” One never knows what a day will bring and that is true here in this remote Alaskan village. I was quickly brought up to speed on this situation. On March 5th a charter pilot, Ken, flew into Atqasuk in his Piper Seneca twin with five phone company employees. It was -38 with a 15 mph wind. Apparently when he landed his left wing wheel had slipped on the rim. Unfortunately, he didn’t notice it until he had taxied halfway down the runway for takeoff, where, realizing he could do nothing but turn around and make a bee line on the flat tire back to the tarmac so he would be off the runway and could get power to plug in his engine heaters. About that time a Hageland flight landed and Ken asked the pilot if he knew where he could get a tube for his tire. The pilot said no and seemingly shined him off. Mel had met the Hageland plane so he gave Ken a ride into the village and put him up in the satellite communications shack for the night.

This was my introduction to what it is like to be stranded in a small Alaska village. Following is an accounting of what it took to get a pilot out of his jam. So off we went through the school, the bus barn, and over to the auto mechanics shop to find a jack, timbers, planks, tools and most important of all a space heater. We found most of the stuff needed except a working space heater. The school had one but as with much of what is here, it didn’t work. It was on the list of things for me to fix but I had not gotten to it with all the other things needing work. I asked Ken, “Do you know anything about space heaters?” Oh, a little he replied. He had a little incentive to get it going, as it’s still -38 with a 20mph wind. We go over and look at it. The first thing he does is get out his little nine LED flashlight, opens the fuel tank cap and peers in. I stand by, thinking, now that’s a dumb place to start, since in my experience I had not seen a contaminated fuel tank for at least 30 years. My thought was jarred when he says look in here. See those bubbles on the bottom? That’s water in the fuel and oh my see all that dirt and crud also on the bottom. So, we find a container, turn the space heater upside down and swish out about six gallons of fuel, dirt and water. One thing I really like about working with diesel fuel like that is that you get it all over you and you smell like a Dodge truck for at least three or four days after, no matter how many showers you take and you end up with no place to sleep because your wife can‘t stand you. I said something like let’s pour the good stuff off the top back into the fuel tank. The look on his face was one of sheer terror. I had forgotten that he was a pilot and the thought of using any fuel even close to contaminated is tantamount to death. We found a gas can and off we went to the gas station. It’s 10:00 o’clock in the morning, but the station was still closed! We went back to the school and found that our only choice was to siphon some out of one of the school building’s fuel supply tanks. After some thought about doing that in this weather. I, again, brought up the idea of using the six gallons of dirty fuel. Ken, I said, “this is not your plane we are pouring this into, it’s just a space heater. If it quits you will just freeze your weenie off but you won’t go down and die“. He thought about it for maybe two seconds and said. “OK lets do it“. We got about three good gallons out of the six and now try to fire it up. It started spit and died; started spit and died. After cleaning the nozzle, the piping and the tank filter twice, it started putting out HEAT nicely. All this only took three hours. Then off we go to the airport, fire up the space heater, put down the timbers and planks, jack the plane up and remove the tire all in about 15 minutes! When we got back to the school and took the tire off the rim, we found that the tube stem had been cut off but the tire was OK. Ken made some calls to Fairbanks but all to no avail, nobody had a tube on hand. Now he was really in a dither. Then out of the blue, Tom, from Hageland called and said he found a tube in Point Lay and that it was on their plane to Barrow. It would be on the 2:30 PM flight to Atqasuk. Ken was elated. Apparently, when he got back to Barrow, the Hageland pilot that Ken had talked to the day before had mentioned it to Tom, the manager, and being the nice guy he is took it upon himself to help out. As 2:30 PM approached, someone called Hageland and found out that they were not coming because they didn’t have any passengers. Ken was bummed. Then someone said the next flight was due in at 4:20 PM. Ken was again elated that he still had a chance to get home to Fairbanks by nightfall. At 4:00 PM we find out that the 4:20 PM flight was a Frontier not a Hageland flight. Again, Ken was bummed, but wait the Hageland flight will be in at 5:00 PM. Ken was elated. By now, Ken is showing signs classic signs of a bi-polar personality.

Ken had made himself useful during the day, by helping me move a two hundred pound pump from the warehouse to the boiler room. After lunch he helped with another emergency as a pipe from a sprinkler system had broken and was spraying all over the kindergarten classroom. It was rather hard for the teacher to keep the kids on task with water spraying everywhere. The extreme cold is hard on everything.

At 5:00PM we raced out, to meet the Hageland flight to pick up the tube, but wait, it was a 6 x 700 instead of a 6 x 600, one size larger. Ken is depressed. On the way back to the school we discuss putting it into the tire anyway just to get him home. Back at the school he called his mechanic and
told him about it. The mechanic says “OH NO!” Ken says “ I’m stuffing it in anyway.” The mechanic’s reply - “do it”- and we did. After mounting tube and tire back on the rim we headed for the bus barn to inflate it to 55 psi. As it neared the specified pounds I suggested to Ken that maybe he should put 60 pounds in it since it was so cold - and he did. At 5:30 PM we headed for the airport. We fired up the space heater and installed the tire back on his plane. Just as he was finishing up, the space heater ran out of fuel. We quickly loaded the jack, timbers, planks and space heater into the pickup and stowed his engine covers and extension cords in his plane. He shook my hand and said “don’t leave me till I am in the air“. The plane’s engines almost didn’t start but after a lot of coaxing they got going and after warming them up, down the runway he went. Into the air and with a tip of his wings, he was gone.

This was not the end of Ken. He had insisted on taking the part we needed to repair the broken sprinkler system. He was able to get the replacement part, and was planning to send it by mail. The stars lined up and good fortune followed. Curtis and Charlie were coming to visit on Saturday. Curtis suggested that he get the new part from Ken and bring it up when he came. When I called Ken to let him know about this plan I got him out of his hot tub. He took Curtis’s phone number. When he met Curtis to deliver the part he made a point to mention that I had disturbed his soak in the hot tub.