Alaska aviation museum gets vintage plane back up in the air

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – Even though it was a cloudy morning at Lake Hood, it was still filled with spectators ready to watch the Grumman Goose, an amphibious airplane, make its way back into the air.

There are only about 30 of this plane left out of the approximately 350 made that are airworthy, according to one pilot at Lake Hood. Wednesday was the first successful test flight that this specific aircraft has made in about 16 years.

Grumman Gooses’ were first built in 1937 but stopped production in 1945. Many Gooses’ made their way to Alaska because they are well suited for the coastal conditions, flying over areas such as the southern coast, Southeast Alaska, Southwest Alaska, and the Aleutian Islands.

Burke Mees, the pilot flying the plane, volunteered his time for the museum. Mees said he used to fly the planes commercially.

“This particular airplane was a Fish and Wildlife airplane, but yeah, they’re just kind of a part of day-to-day life in the state of Alaska for an awful long time. So it’s kind of a nice exhibit for the museum to have one,” Mees said.

The plane had been with the military its whole life, until it was donated by the U.S. Department of Interior by former Sen. Ted Stevens and staff.

Mechanics like Michael Fritcher have been working on the Goose for the last six months. They worked for months in a nearby hangar before it came to the airport for the final touches.

“It’s all been leading up to today!” Fritcher said.

Since it was still being operated by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game until about 2008, Fritcher said they still had “an opportunity to work with some of the people that had had their hands on this airplane back when the government ran it.”

“They’ve come by several times. Some of the pilots that flew it, and certainly some of the mechanics that worked on it, have been invaluable as far as helping us to find some things that we weren’t quite familiar with,” Fritcher said.

On Wednesday, the plane first made a few high-speed passes back and forth on Lake Hood to check the engines before taking off into the air. It flew about 1,500 feet above the lake, circling around before going out to Cook Inlet and making a safe landing in the water, putting about 30 minutes on the plane.

Both Fritcher and Mees encouraged people to come out and look at it at the museum this summer, saying the plane’s connection to Alaska aviation history will resonate with many people who remember and recognize it from the past.

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