It was the last day of the hunting season. Tanks of fuel stashed at a remote Alaskan airstrip had to be retrieved. Time was short since a storm was approaching. A Cessna 206 landed on a gravel bar in the Porcupine River, and the pilot began loading 15-gallon fuel containers into the plane. To save time, she asked two hunters, who were waiting there for a different airplane, to empty two of the containers into her wing tanks. The whole operation lasted 12 minutes.  

Seconds after the 206 became airborne, its engine sputtered. It banked steeply, and its right wingtip struck the surface of the river. The airplane cartwheeled before coming to rest, partially submerged. The powerful current and icy water of the river prevented the two hunters from getting to it. By the time a raft had been brought from the nearest base, 60 miles away, an hour and a half had passed. The pilot, 28, was dead.

Accident investigators minutely examined the 206’s engine and found nothing wrong with it. What was wrong was that there was water—in some places more water than avgas—in the fuel system, including parts that river water had not been able to enter.

A pilot who later inspected one of the smaller fuel containers found about a cupful of water in 8 gallons of fuel. Since the plane had arrived without any trouble, it was pretty clear that the water in the fuel system had been added along with the fuel during the hasty stopover on the sandbar and caused the engine to lose power soon after it went to full throttle.

What looked like one cause, however, was really several.

The fuel cache, which had been set up two months earlier, consisted of 55-gallon metal drums from which fuel was pumped into 15-gallon plastic containers that were easier for the pilot to handle. Fuel would be transferred from those containers into the airplane’s wing tanks by a battery-operated pump. 

When the cache was originally established, the pump had a filter to trap debris. In addition, a Mr. Funnel was provided. It contained both a screening filter and hydrophobic membrane that allowed fuel to pass through but not water. 

During the course of the hunting season, the pump’s filter became clogged and was removed. It was not replaced, even though the fact that it had gotten clogged seems to suggest that a filter was needed. The water-excluding funnel also was “lost”—whatever that means on an unfrequented sandbar—and it too was not replaced. Thus, nothing remained to ensure that fuel pumped into planes would be clean and free of water. 

In principle, a final line of defense existed in the form of the airplane’s fuel drains. In this 1975 206 those were four in number (later Cessnas, whose integral fuel tanks can hide water behind ribs, have as many as 13). Two were, as you would expect, on the undersides of the wings at the inboard ends of the tanks. One was on the fuel strainer, or “gascolator,” at the firewall. The fourth drained a small collector tank located in the bottom of the fuselage. 

The accident pilot, and other pilots who worked for the same flying service, were aware of the lack of filtration at the remote site and had “numerous conversations” about the danger of water contamination in fuel and the need to check the sumps after refueling. The 206 was equipped, however, with a belly pod that covered the fuselage sump drain, so that it might be necessary to shift or remove cargo in order to get at the drain. The accident pilot had repeatedly complained about the difficulty of draining the fuselage sump, and she was said to habitually skip that step despite “talks at great length” urging her not to.

Since the fuel pickup in each wing tank is located slightly above the bottom of the tank, small amounts of water could be taken from the quick-drains without any of that water having found its way to the fuselage tank. But if sufficient water got into a wing tank, some of it could run down into the fuselage tank, water being heavier than fuel. The fact that the engine ran for some time before stumbling suggests, however, that the fatal water came from the wings, not the fuselage tank.

According to the pilot’s colleagues, it was “company policy” that only the pilots themselves do the refueling at remote sites and not delegate it to anyone else. The hunters who pumped fuel into the 206 for the pilot recalled that she did not check the sumps before taking off and that there was no mention of the possibility of water in the fuel.

So, one by one, the conditions for the accident had been put into place. The mere fact that there had been “numerous conversations” about the danger of fuel contamination suggests that the company’s pilots knew that a potentially serious problem existed. The clogged fuel filter had not been replaced. The fuel storage tanks, even if they were impervious to rain, were likely to accumulate water from repeated cycles of condensation, and yet the water-filtering funnel was gone too. Why a replacement was not obtained is unclear. Amazon offers Mr. Funnel filters for around $40, delivered tomorrow (or, in the bush, maybe a few days later).

The National Transportation Safety Board blamed the accident on the pilot’s “inadequate preflight inspection,” with the company’s failure to replace the fuel filters a contributing circumstance.

The NTSB’s report omitted mention of a third factor.

The accident occurred on a meander in the river. The sandbar from which the 206 took off was oriented directly toward a broad gravel bank on the opposite shore. The immediate cause of the crash seems to have been the pilot’s decision to turn back, which led to the right wingtip hitting the water. If she had continued straight ahead, she might have made the far shore or at least ditched under control in the river. She might have lost the airplane in the process but saved her life.

A retired fighter pilot, who at one point during his career in the Air Force had the job of test-flying F-100s after they emerged from maintenance, told me that he wouldn’t hesitate to punch out of an airplane that failed of its own accord but would be very reluctant to abandon one whose problems he himself had caused.

In her haste, the pilot had not checked for water in the fuel, even though it had been a topic of much discussion. When the engine stumbled, she probably guessed the reason instantly. She switched on the fuel pump in hope that the engine would come back to life. Trying to save the airplane, she banked back toward the runway. But then…

This column first appeared in the December Issue 965 of the FLYING print edition.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – A Kipnuk man was sentenced Tuesday to a composite sentence of 263 years to serve for 17 counts of sexual assault and sexual abuse of six children between 2006 and 2013. The court ordered that Paul was not eligible for discretionary parole.

According to the Alaska Department of Law, this sentence appears to be the longest sentence handed down for sexual assault and sexual abuse in the history of the State of Alaska.

The man is 37-year-old David Paul. He was convicted of 28 counts following a three-week jury trial held in Bethel in August. At sentencing, the convictions merged into 17 counts. Those included five counts of first-degree sexual abuse of a minor, six counts of second-degree sexual abuse of a minor, four counts of first-degree sexual assault and two counts of second-degree sexual assault.

In May 2021, one of the victims came forward as an adult to report Paul’s prior abuse committed against them. That victim also reported observing Paul sexually abusing a separate victim. During a several-month-long investigation, additional victims were identified and interviewed. These additional victims disclosed that Paul also sexually abused them when they were children.

Paul was arrested in October 2021.

During the trial, the jury heard emotional testimony from all six victims, who explained that they initially did not report the abuse as children because they were scared and did not think anyone would believe them.

Several of the victims gave impact statements at sentencing. They told the court about the lifelong impact of Paul’s crimes on them. Each expressed that Paul stole their childhood.

In the press statement from the Alaska Department of Law, one victim told the court that they had spent years blaming themself.

“I have spent years thinking it was my fault for not protecting my brother. I blamed myself for not knowing how to tell my mom at such a young age. I did not ask for this. Today I no longer blame myself, because what happened in the dark has come to the light,” the victim stated.

Assistant Attorney General Bailey Woolfstead emphasized the number of victims, the length and continued nature of the sexual assaults and abuse, and Paul’s manipulative and predatory behavior. She argued that his actions required the court to permanently remove Paul from the community to ensure that he never harmed another child.

Bethel Superior Court Judge William Montgomery stated that Paul constituted a “worst offender” under the law.

“The amount of damage that has been inflicted is unspeakable … I see no potential for rehabilitation for Mr. Paul. If Mr. Paul is out and about in the community he poses among the most severe threats to the community in the YK Delta, his behavior and criminal history has demonstrated such,” Montgomery said.

In handing down the sentence, Judge Montgomery stated his intent was to ensure Paul is never released from prison.

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Alaska didn’t solve who killed 23-year-old Eunice Whitman, but its justice system did manage to lock up the wrong man for seven years, ProPublica reports, in a gripping investigation of two eerily similar murders that police have not linked. Whitman of Bethel, Alaska, was found in May 2015 on tundra at the end of a heavily-trafficked boardwalk: stabbed in the throat and chest, clothes removed and placed nearby. Police quickly arrested her boyfriend, Justine Paul, telling the public her blood was on his clothes. A grand jury indicted him 11 days later. The case then stalled for years as the supposed key evidence quietly crumbled: state lab testing showed the blood on Paul’s clothes matched him. Prosecutors ultimately dropped the charges in 2022. By then, Paul had spent seven years in jail awaiting trial.

His defense attorney, former prosecutor Marcy McDannel, came to believe police had focused on the wrong man while overlooking others. Male DNA on Whitman’s body did not match Paul, the four men who found her, or a registered sex offender seen in the area. A defense expert later identified at least a dozen people who, he argued, should have ranked as higher-priority suspects than Paul based on their proximity or past contact with Whitman. Among them: a man with a history of violence on the same boardwalk; an ex-boyfriend she named in a restraining order; and a man who had Whitman’s phone and a bandaged hand a week after her death. None were charged; two are now dead.

McDannel kept digging after Paul’s release and zeroed in on another possibility: convicted killer Samuel Atchak. Nine months before Whitman’s murder, 19-year-old Roxanne Smart was found in the nearby village of Chevak, also partially nude on the tundra, stabbed in the throat and torso, her clothing arranged close by. Atchak confessed in that case, saying he surprised Smart from behind before making her blackout, and is serving 115 years. In a 2022 prison interview, he coolly analyzed Whitman’s killing, theorizing about the attacker’s motive and method (surprise from behind with a “chokehold.”) He also recalled being in Bethel on the weekend of the killing, on a flight stopover.

State troopers later told McDannel that travel and medical records ruled Atchak out in Whitman’s case but did not share the underlying documents; Atchak has declined new interviews. Public pressure resurfaced in January, when an advocate for missing and murdered Indigenous people posted about Whitman online, prompting calls to police. In March, Alaska’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons unit took over the case and says it is starting from scratch. However, Whitman’s family says they still haven’t been re-interviewed—and still don’t know who killed her. While officials concede “unacceptable” delays in the case, citing heavy turnover among rural prosecutors, they maintain that everyone acted properly.