By CAP Red Flag | AuxBeacon News Contributor
[Editor’s Note: We received this in our inbox yesterday. Thank you for letting us know.]
Readers,
The NTSB will most definitely rule this as pilot error and this CAP pilot was the Director of Safety for Alaska. CAP is having a meltdown over the findings at AuxBeacon and they have a stooge running DDOS attacks on our site whenever there is embarrassing news for the program.
PACEDNO
P.S. Note this comment that really sums up the ethics and competence problems with Civil Air Patrol.
Truly shameful this “legendary pilot” would accept a flight 2 other companies declined, then scud run VFR at night to try and do it. This is not smart or prudent in any way for what we do in part 135 operations, in fact it’s absolutely stupid. This flys in the face of every attempt in the last 30-40 years to bring sanity, good culture, and proper decision making into the Air Medical industry. Shame on the pilot, shame on the company for no operational control. – Jack Harper
Medevac Duo Killed in Plane Crash Lived Outside but were Drawn to the Alaska Outdoors
A little more than two hours before Friday’s fatal crash of an air ambulance headed from Anchorage to Seward, another company declined to pick up a patient on the same route because the weather was bad.
Three people died Friday evening when a plane carrying a two-person medical crew crashed above the Sterling Highway on the Kenai Peninsula. The crash under unknown circumstances occurred about 15 miles west of Quartz Creek Airport.
The twin-engine Piper PA-31 was headed to Seward Airport, where two Medevac Alaska employees planned to pick up a patient from Providence Seward Medical Center before returning to Anchorage, according to a statement from Security Aviation, which operated the plane.
Burts, Cartner and pilot Glen Morthorpe died in the fiery crash above the Sterling Highway near Cooper Landing. The air ambulance was headed from Anchorage to Seward to pick up a patient.
Paramedic Maddox Burts and registered nurse Rob Cartner were only a few days away from the end of their monthlong shift with Medevac Alaska when their plane crashed Friday night on the Kenai Peninsula.
Burts, Cartner and pilot Glen Morthorpe died in the fiery crash above the Sterling Highway near Cooper Landing. The air ambulance was headed from Anchorage to Seward to pick up a patient.
The plane crashed under unknown circumstances, officials said, although other air ambulance firms declined trips on the same route due to weather concerns.
Morthorpe, 75, was a longtime pilot and flight instructor who was “willing to go out in the dead of night and rescue someone who needed help,” his friend Rob Stapleton said.
Morthorpe volunteered as the Director of Safety for the Alaska Wing Civil Air Patrol, taught flight instructions at Take Flight Alaska and worked for years at the Medallion Foundation, a nonprofit air safety organization that closed in November.
Morthorpe grew up in Australia but has lived in Eagle River with his wife for decades, Stapleton said.
He was working for Security Aviation when the plane crashed Friday. The company said in a statement Monday that Morthorpe was “one of our most experienced pilots. Glen was a true pioneer in Alaska’s aviation community, and we extend our heartfelt sympathies to his family and friends.”
Your CAP Crash assembly stories get many hits. You should add this and the most recent ones to it.
I noticed what Richard R said in his comments.
“Throw the book at pilots who make poor decisions that survive. Fine companies that order pilots to fly in bad weather. Instead, we always say what a great person the pilot was instead of publicly condemning them for taking innocent passengers to they’re deaths. What happened to the pilot that over loaded his plane with building supplies to the point it crashed on takeoff killing his son? In every crash we make the pilots sound like great people and hero’s which sends the wrong message to other pilots.”
Civil Air Patrol people are not heroes, they are a psychotic menace to all of us.