This Old Airport's Got Me Down: The End of Gracious Air Travel

This old airport's got me down,

It's no earthly use to me.

Gordon Lightfoot

As a young Alaska lawyer, I traveled almost a million miles in airplanes. I flew over three-quarters of a million miles in airline jets, mostly Delta, Alaska Airlines, and Markair. I flew another quarter of a million miles over bush Alaska in various small planes: Lockheed Electras, DeHavilland Beavers, and Cessna 185 Skywagons--the pickup trucks of the sky.

There was nothing glamorous about flying in small airplanes over the Alaska bush. I threw up once flying over Chickaloon Pass in a Cessna 152. 

And a young pilot scared me out of my wits flying out of Ketchikan in a DeHavilland Otter on a foggy afternoon--the plane loaded with ice cream and chainsaws for a logging camp. He had forgotten to secure a cargo door as we lifted off, which swung open and banged against the fuselage. Unperturbed, he landed in the water and walked out on a float to give the door a good slam.

In those days, flying commercial was altogether different from flying in the bush. The airlines served hot meals on some flights, and most passengers were fully clothed. I always wore a coat and tie when I flew. And there was a graciousness about commercial air travel then that's missing now.

I recall flying down the Yukon Valley in a chartered DeHavilland Beaver on a snowy winter night, hoping to catch a commercial flight from the Inuit village of Bethel into Anchorage. I was wearing a grey pinstriped suit and tie under a cashmere overcoat. The pilot was bundled up in a khaki-covered Carhartt survival suit and wearing a holstered Ruger .44 magnum revolver.

My pilot looked me over before boarding and laughed out loud at my attire, "One of us isn't dressed appropriately," he joked.

For some reason not explained, we took off late from the Yupik village of St. Mary, where I had attended a school board meeting.

 

Clearly, I wouldn't arrive in Bethel in time to board my commercial flight home to Anchorage. This was a serious problem for me because there were no overnight accommodations for Koss'aq  (white) travelers. 

About 50 miles out from the Bethel airport, my pistol-toting pilot radioed the control tower and asked for the Alaska Airlines jet, a Boeing 737, to wait for me. I  recall a radio response, but it wasn't clear to me whether my pilot's request was granted.

We landed in a snow flurry, and two Anchorage Airlines employees sprinted out of the terminal building to grab my luggage and hurry me through the metal detector. Both young women--one Yupik and one white--were coatless on this frigid Alaska night.

I looked down the runway and saw an Alaska Airlines jet parked on the tarmac, the tail painted with the iconic image of an Eskimo. The rear passenger door was open. They waited for me!

As I scrambled up the steps, I saw a young flight attendant standing in the doorway, her profile backlit by the interior lights, reminding me of Our Lady of Guadalupe. She was hugging herself against the cold.

I will be forever grateful to the Bethel Airport aircraft controller and the Alaska Airlines pilot who delayed a scheduled flight for me on that long-ago winter night. I often think of that night when I fly commercial these days, squeezed into an economy seat, issued a bag of peanuts, and placed next to an obese fellow traveler wearing pajamas and eating a carry-on pizza.

A memory of gracious air travel

 

"I've always depended on the kindness of strangers": An Athabaskan woman and six Mexicans saved me from freezing to death in Alaska's Copper River Basin

 "I've always depended on the kindness of strangers," Blanche DeBois said in A Streetcar Named Desire. I know what Blanche was talking about. Several times in my life, I was saved from catastrophe by someone I did not know.

Many years ago, when I was a young Alaska lawyer, I was driving a rental car through the Copper River Basin on my way to a school board meeting in the little town of Glenallen. It was winter, and the temperature on the Richardson Highway was 20 below zero.

I wasn't speeding, but I was driving too fast for the road conditions. I hit a patch of black ice and rolled my car into a snowbank. I wasn't hurt, but I was dangling from my shoulder harness. I released the seatbelt and climbed out through the passenger side window.

It was about three in the afternoon, and dusk was falling. I had my so-called survival gear in the car's backseat  (parka, Sorel arctic-pack boots, heavy wool pants). I began putting it on as a heavy snowfall began, almost immediately obscuring my rolled car, which was white.

Before I got my cold-weather gear on, I realized I would not survive the night. The temperature would drop to 40 below, and no one was likely to travel Richardson Highway at this late hour.  My cold-weather gear was utterly inadequate for what lay ahead.

As my terror began to rise,  I saw a car creeping down the highway at about 20 miles an hour. An Athabaskan woman was driving, and she gave me a lift. I still remember the feel of her car's warm cabin with hot air blowing toward me through the air vents.

Improbably, the Athabaskan lady was traveling to visit her boyfriend, who was working on a seismic crew somewhere out in this frozen waste. Before long, we found him. He was Mexican (also improbable), one of a crew of six guys who spoke Spanish. 

The boyfriend and his comrades had some sort of enormous industrial vehicle.  I couldn't make it out in the darkness, but I recall it was so large that I had to climb a ladder to get into the cab.  We drove down Richardson Highway until we found my car.

Our little group pondered the car's situation. It was lying on its side with all four wheels exposed. 

"Anybody hurt?" the leader asked.

"No," I replied.

"Thanks be to God," he said and made the sign of the cross.

After diagnosing the situation, the Mexicans attached a chain to the car's underbody and pulled it out with their behemoth machine.  Then they pushed it over until it was upright on the road.  They cleared the snow out of the engine compartment and told me to try to start the engine.

I turned the ignition key, and the car started. All of a sudden, my near-death experience became an amusing personal anecdote. I told them I would buy them a case of beer, but one of my rescuers demured.  "No, no," he said. "Jack Daniel." 

I was not Catholic at the time, and I found the Mexican's sign of the cross to be charmingly childlike. I did not realize that the Athabaskan woman and the Mexican seismic crew were angels dispatched by St. Joseph to save my life.

But why did St. Joseph bother with me? I still don't have a clue.

Richardson Highway in winter