Kavik Air / Blue River awareness

[Merc]

I don’t think it’s an issue of someone doesn’t belong somewhere. I read a good article yesterday about how these companies ultimately put the call in the pilot’s hands, but a pilot’s decision (especially a young pilot) is obviously largely influenced by company culture and front office pressure. A lot of these accidents do have a common theme; and that is they seem to happen to the same companies that notoriously seem to be overbooked. This September had horrible weather. Everyone got behind at some point. Some operations WAY more than others. The pilot makes the call, but when people in the office are going on about being behind, clients are waiting in the hangar/field for days, meat is rotting, the notorious bush pilot one liners are being repeated, etc; I’d imagine a young pilot feels the pressure. It seems we’re quickly heading a point where the FAA and Big Game Commercial Services Board are going to get involved. There was another plane that hit the tundra last week that killed 4. Same operator that has a fatal every 18 months or so.

RIP to the young lady. Horrible, horrible stuff.

What you describe is not the way that they operated and yes sadly I flew with them and even reviewed them here. Yet it is 100% in the pilots hands what they choose to fly especially with the technology and reporting we have today.

And as for the St. Mary crash, that wasn’t a revenue flight, let alone the “old Yute”.

 

[arctichunting]

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I don’t think it’s fair to put this as a shot at Larry’s character. Blue river/Kavik has went from where their base is to FAI, ome, otz and god knows where else in one year. You can’t send a bunch of new pilots I’m every which way into new country with a bunch of over bookings and expect it to end well.
Condolences to her and her family. She may have been a great pilot and freak shit happens- it’s the name of the industry.


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[william schmaltz]

And as for the St. Mary crash, that wasn’t a revenue flight, let alone the “old Yute”.

What do you consider “old Yute?” Pre 2017? In that case, “new Yute” now has 9 deaths since 2020. It’s a full blown miracle that it’s not more. Two crashes in 2019 and one in 2022 somehow had no fatalities, thank God. That doesn’t include the planes randomly combusting and other incidents. No coincidence the owner has had multiple fatals in his other flight company often suggested here. Company culture matters. Reports on past incidents all have a shared focus on company policy and operational control. The most recent was an internal flight - seats filled with pilots that all should’ve known better. After the 3 days of weather before the incident and short window before the next storm moved in, it’s not over the top to speculate that plane was coming home with moose meat in the morning and needed to be in BET to gather more hunters on the turnaround.

I agree with Larry, these companies pumping 100+ GROUPS are operating from a place of greed. They’re putting their own clients in danger and negatively impacting everyone else trying to run wilderness operations and their hunters seeking it. When you fly over dozens of spots and they all have new camps in slightly different locations each week of September, you start to feel sorry for folks that have been misled.

Nothing will change. Different year, same story. Hopefully people complete their due diligence, but it seems very few are concerned or simply don’t know better.

 

[kwackkillncrew]

I am sure glad we dont use some of these operations to get out to the areas we need to survey.

 

[Antares]

I don’t think it’s fair to put this as a shot at Larry’s character.

I think it's tacky AF to use someone's death as an opportunity to gripe about another operator dropping clients on top of yours. Regardless of whether it's true or not, the timing is in poor taste. You're free to disagree.

 

[Larry Bartlett]

Frankly, death is rudely untimely. Meanwhile, and with great urgency to stock pile deposits to CTA, someone on this forum may now have something to think about before committing. This isn't about Hannah's tragedy, it's about what patterns of behavior and hyper volume leads to with great predictability. There is no better time to be aware of this than immediately. If I waited two weeks, a month..., how many of our forum viewers would have sent these guys thousands for deposit? Avoidable if tacky AF? yup

JH has a host of professionally offensive and illegal field practices reported from this year alone, with plenty of witnesses with grid coordinates. He's got heat on him from both sides of the LEO fence. They needs to take that shit somewhere else.

 

[Scottf270]

William, I know exactly who you are referring to. I spoke to a guy who hunted outta Bethel this year and he said the area was flooded.

When you have people lined up throwing money at you, most aren't gonna turn it down. Milking the resource and over extending has consequences. In the end, lives will be lost and the resource will be damaged.

When enough folks die or area closures happen, the ones who refuse to see the abuse will cry " why didn't somebody do something?" But by then , it will be too late.

 

[arctichunting]

I think it's tacky AF to use someone's death as an opportunity to gripe about another operator dropping clients on top of yours. Regardless of whether it's true or not, the timing is in poor taste. You're free to disagree.

I don’t think Larry’s gripe comes from a capitalistic competition standpoint- otherwise I would agree.


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