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Anyone have any more details?
Allegations of Employee Misconduct Force FSS Closures in Alaska
- Thread starter MountainDude
- Start date
Anyone have any more details?
Clip4
Touchdown! Greaser!
Misconduct at an Alaska flight service station? I suspect employees receiving pay while out salmon fishing or moose hunting.
wilkersk
En-Route
They've been doing the job at home on their MacBook while eating Top-Ramen and Seattle just now found out they've ignored the post-COVID "return to the office" memo from 2024.
(totally speculative, don'tchaknow...)
Clip4
Touchdown! Greaser!
In Alaska yes.
Velocity173
Touchdown! Greaser!
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I think Alaska is about the only place in the US where it still makes sense to have them. Probably pretty spotty with cell service / internet in some areas. Same thing with survival equipment. The vast majority of areas I fly in a water bottle and cell phone would be fine. In Alaska, you better be prepared to survive at least a night or too.
Things are dramatically different up there.
My wife and I flew ma loop ticket in a Navajo mail/passenger/freight run. I advised that I was a com and inst pilot, the chief pilot fitted me with a headset with boom mic, and seated me in the right seat. Special instruction...Do not touch any flight or panel control as long as the pilot is still alive.
The pilot was meticulous and precise, but after the second stop, asked if I would like to look for moose? "Yes", and we stayed low enough to clearly see moose tracks in the riverbank mud, but the actual moose were back in the willow patches, and we did not see any. We were so low that he had to climb to reach airport altitude at Eagle.
The leg back to Fairbanks had tall clouds on the mountain range, and I anticipated one of those famous trips through a pass. The pilot called up with an IFR flight plan, and was refused, the radar was down for maintenance. We continued climbing into the clouds, and I asked? The reply was that there was no one else in the clouds around here. "How can you be sure?" If there were, they would have transmitted immediately and said where they were, plus the controller would have told me there had been an earlier request. This is Alaska.
My wife and I flew ma loop ticket in a Navajo mail/passenger/freight run. I advised that I was a com and inst pilot, the chief pilot fitted me with a headset with boom mic, and seated me in the right seat. Special instruction...Do not touch any flight or panel control as long as the pilot is still alive.
The pilot was meticulous and precise, but after the second stop, asked if I would like to look for moose? "Yes", and we stayed low enough to clearly see moose tracks in the riverbank mud, but the actual moose were back in the willow patches, and we did not see any. We were so low that he had to climb to reach airport altitude at Eagle.
The leg back to Fairbanks had tall clouds on the mountain range, and I anticipated one of those famous trips through a pass. The pilot called up with an IFR flight plan, and was refused, the radar was down for maintenance. We continued climbing into the clouds, and I asked? The reply was that there was no one else in the clouds around here. "How can you be sure?" If there were, they would have transmitted immediately and said where they were, plus the controller would have told me there had been an earlier request. This is Alaska.
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Let's take this up a notch. Employees had been replaced years ago by AI and no one noticed. Or they were involved in some type of Grizzly Bear Cub black market.
Circa 2001 my company (MITRE) had a job posting up there. Needed to be a private pilot with tailwheel endorsement (in addition to engineering creds) to go to Anchorage for 6 months and work on testing and troubleshooting the initial ADSB installs which started in AK due to so many midairs. Job came with a Super Cub to fly for the testing. I called the hiring manager and told him I didn't have my private but (based on my military NFO time) could likely do it in a couple months and he said I'd be a great candidate. I ask about follow-up work and he said there was none up there. Discussed with my wife and she and I agreed I already had interesting work in MD and she wasn't very interested in Alaska. I didn't go back and do my private for another 16 years but did do it in less than three months.
Knowing what I know now (after having retired 23 years later) I could have found work in a dark windowless room at Elmendorf (AMOC) that was related to the work I did do for all those years. What could have been.
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CIIS - Fort Meade - But we fled MD for NH as soon as we could!
Zeldman
Touchdown! Greaser!
I may or may not have flown a Navajo at an altitude where I had to gain altitude to miss caribou antlers.
I did a charter to Eagle one time. I sat in what they called a restaurant and listened to a misguided group of locals talk about how bad the government is and how their form of socialism would be better. Since I was vastly outnumbered, I kept quiet and at times I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing out loud.
Alaska can be a little different.
GaryM
En-Route
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As the women up there say, "The odds are good but the good are odd."
Zeldman
Touchdown! Greaser!
I may resemble that remark...
Correct about needing them in Alaska. We have had FAA Webcams available for use at the passes to cross mountains ranges. When doing a Pre-flight could look and see conditions.
Flying home June 27, 2021: First leg From Orcas, Island, WA KORS to PAPG for fuel.
PAPG on Mitkof Island These photos are stitched together, due to airspeed they have the curvature black spots. Or weird looking wing to panel
Leaving Petersburg, AK for home PAEN meant flying the North Shore of The Gulf of Alaska, then heading west across Prince William Sound. Wasn't IFR but I'm not going to fly across Prince William Sound at 2500ft between islands. At 50 degrees and high humidity, recipe for carb ice.
Left where the clouds are is Prince William Sound, center of propeller arc is PAGK, see the blue sky? to the right really fun looking clouds....
Upon reaching Yakutat, PAYA, called FSS at Juneau. I could see all kinds of layers going across Prince William, I fly a VFR RV-6. Looking North towards Glenallen could see blue sky. Asked briefer what PAGK looked like, VFR CAVU, webcam verifies CAVU. Change my flight plan to PAGK, please.
Before reaching Gulkana, could see the top of Mt. Marcus Baker. Knowing this, from previous flights near the Knik Glacier, knew the Knik Glacier was open and not mtn top obscuration. Climbed to 14,500, oxygen already in use, cleared the clouds with mountain tops sticking through underneath, blue sky above and was able to descend into the Knik Glacier and a quick trip past Anchorage to Kenai and home. Added 85-miles to the trip. Clouds no longer any issues, PAEN, Kenai was reporting 5500 sct.
The next 4-days were forecast to be weathered in, and PAYA was out of fuel. PACV (Cordova) was marginal at 1200 BKN, 2300 OVC. Needed an option and the FSS gave one.
My flight time that day started at 0530. After an hour and half break at Petersburg, PAPG, my total flight time was 9.9 hours to cover 1558-miles. Up the Canada Coastal Mountains back to Alaska. 702 miles of some really beautiful mountains, very few places to land. I trust my mecahnic!
Mike
Flying home June 27, 2021: First leg From Orcas, Island, WA KORS to PAPG for fuel.
PAPG on Mitkof Island These photos are stitched together, due to airspeed they have the curvature black spots. Or weird looking wing to panel
Leaving Petersburg, AK for home PAEN meant flying the North Shore of The Gulf of Alaska, then heading west across Prince William Sound. Wasn't IFR but I'm not going to fly across Prince William Sound at 2500ft between islands. At 50 degrees and high humidity, recipe for carb ice.
Left where the clouds are is Prince William Sound, center of propeller arc is PAGK, see the blue sky? to the right really fun looking clouds....
Upon reaching Yakutat, PAYA, called FSS at Juneau. I could see all kinds of layers going across Prince William, I fly a VFR RV-6. Looking North towards Glenallen could see blue sky. Asked briefer what PAGK looked like, VFR CAVU, webcam verifies CAVU. Change my flight plan to PAGK, please.
Before reaching Gulkana, could see the top of Mt. Marcus Baker. Knowing this, from previous flights near the Knik Glacier, knew the Knik Glacier was open and not mtn top obscuration. Climbed to 14,500, oxygen already in use, cleared the clouds with mountain tops sticking through underneath, blue sky above and was able to descend into the Knik Glacier and a quick trip past Anchorage to Kenai and home. Added 85-miles to the trip. Clouds no longer any issues, PAEN, Kenai was reporting 5500 sct.
The next 4-days were forecast to be weathered in, and PAYA was out of fuel. PACV (Cordova) was marginal at 1200 BKN, 2300 OVC. Needed an option and the FSS gave one.
My flight time that day started at 0530. After an hour and half break at Petersburg, PAPG, my total flight time was 9.9 hours to cover 1558-miles. Up the Canada Coastal Mountains back to Alaska. 702 miles of some really beautiful mountains, very few places to land. I trust my mecahnic!
Mike