Emergency Landing on the Kenai River

Back in  the mid '90's I decided to get a private pilots license.  I remember during my training I had a bumpy landing and I told my instructor I wanted to practice it again.  He said the landing was fine and that we were done for the day.  He said, "any time you can land a plane it's a good landing.  Any time you can use a plane a second time it's a great landing."   What you see above is a great landing.

Friday afternoon Dan Meyer and I were heading out of Beaver Creek with the anticipation of catching a couple of silver salmon.  Just before we made it to the mouth Dan saw flashing lights and asked if there were cops on the river.  I knew that it couldn't be the cops and quickly determined it was a plane that had just landed near the gravel bar.  We motored down to see if everything was okay.  The pilot was fine but he said he could use a tow to Beaver Creek because the in coming tide would surely cause problems to the beached plane.



We rigged up a tow strap and gave the plane a tow.  

Since I had open space on the dock it only made sense to tow it there.  The pilot told me that he was flying the plane for a friend from Lake Clark to Soldotna.  Not long after take off, the throttle stuck and he thought about making an emergency landing on Big River Lake but the waves were too high and most likely the plane would crash.  He decided to fly over Cook Inlet to land the plane on Mackey Lake were a mechanic resided.   Well, he didn't quite make it to Mackey Lake.  He lost all power and luckily dead sticked it to the lower Kenai River right in front of Beaver Creek.  

The plane sat on our dock until the owner could make it down on Monday.  He had a mechanic take a look at the plane and they found nothing wrong....except for no fuel in the tanks.  After filling the plane with fuel he took off from the dock and was airborne in no time.

Here he is banking the plane at the mouth of the creek on his way to Mackey Lake.

Definitely a little more excitement in a crazy 2012 season.