Here is a sampling of Alaska editorials:
Aug. 18, 2017
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner: NTSB looking for ways to make flying safer in Alaska
That the National Transportation Safety Board held an investigatory hearing Thursday in Alaska is highly notable. It’s the first time the board has held a hearing outside of Washington, D.C., in nearly two decades.
The reason the board came to our state is a grim one: It’s the opinion of the board that too many aircraft are crashing, resulting in numerous deaths.
The October 2016 crash of a Hageland Aviation Services aircraft between two Southwest Alaska villages was a focal point of Thursday’s hearing, which was held in Anchorage. Two pilots and a passenger died in the crash. The NTSB took the unusual step of coming to Alaska because it believes issues involved in that crash can be seen in 35 other crashes in Alaska during the past eight years, resulting in 40 deaths.
“The NTSB believes it important to understand what more can be done to reduce the number of controlled flight into terrain accidents in Alaska,” according to an NTSB news release.
Several topics were discussed at the meeting beyond the Hageland crash, among them pilot training and guidance related to deteriorating weather conditions and safety management, training and oversight resources available to Alaska pilots.
The focus was on a specific type of crash the NTSB refers to as “controlled flight into terrain” or, in some cases, a body of water. No aircraft malfunction occurs in these crashes, and the pilots had no intent to cause them. Aircraft simply fly into a mountain, for example.
The attention from the NTSB is welcome.
Hageland Aviation’s director of operations said during Thursday’s hearing that the company’s pilots would prefer to fly all their routes under instrument flight rules rather than visual flight rules, but that it’s impossible to do so, according to news accounts. The crew in the 2016 crash was flying under visual flight rules.
Why not operate under instrument rules?
Hageland Aviation, like several Alaska air carriers, serves a large area that includes numerous small bush communities. Instrument flight rules require the use of certified weather information - and that’s just not available in much of rural Alaska. No official whether report is available; instead, pilots flying in marginal weather - or weather that unexpectedly worsens - use unofficial sources and fly under visual flight rules. That’s all they’ve got.
And, as Alaskans well know, the weather can change rapidly.
This broad look by the NTSB, a federal entity charged with investigating accidents and making safety recommendations, perhaps could lead to changes that will improve the safety of Alaska’s legendary air travel. Doing so almost certainly will require the involvement of Alaska’s members of Congress, who, on their travels across the state each year, see firsthand the limitations and difficulties of flying to and from distant regions of Alaska.
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Aug. 16, 2017
Ketchikan Daily News: Senior senator delivers
She’s on it.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski has something to talk about with the White House - the new ferry project.
President Trump, in an effort to return manufacturing to the United States, is insisting that federally funded projects be built with domestically made parts. There’s a law to that effect.
The problem is that it takes time to move manufacturing from overseas to the U.S. Some parts aren’t available here, and it takes a waiver from the Federal Highway Administration administrator. Trump hasn’t appointed one yet.
The Alaska Legislature included $244 million in its capital budget to replace the Alaska Marine Highway System’s Tustemena. The ferry has been designed and funding is lined up.
The state can’t buy foreign-made parts - steel, for example - if it spends federal dollars on the project.
This situation is reminiscent of the recently successful effort to preserve a swath of Deer Mountain. Murkowski intervened when the scenic Ketchikan backdrop was threatened with timber harvest, pushing through Congress a land trade between the property owner and the U.S. Forest Service.
At the time, the effort appeared overwhelming. But with the cooperation of the property owner, properly motivated elected officials at all government levels, and no small share of Murkowski’s political power, the mountain will remain in its current state.
Murkowski will be welcoming the U.S. Secretary of Transportation to the state next week, a visit arranged before the Tustemena replacement situation came up. They will be discussing this.
It’s only a matter of time before Murkowski will be able to announce the Tustemena project can proceed full speed ahead.
There’s no other way to go.
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