BY ZAZ HOLLANDER
For the Frontiersman
Published on Thursday, August 4, 2011
MAT-SU — As soon as the floatplane’s engine dropped from a roar to an idle 3,000 feet over Cook Inlet, everyone in the Cessna 185 knew something was very wrong.
Nobody said a word.
Nobody panicked.
The plane began dropping out of the sky.
Pilot Scott Johannes set to work looking for what had suddenly gone so wrong with the fuel system: valves, pumps, controls, breakers — the aviator’s checklist when the power cuts out.
“I immediately realized it was something serious. I looked — we were 20 miles off the coastline and four to five miles the other way. I just immediately turned the plane toward Kalgin Island,” said Johannes, a 48-year-old from Wasilla.
In fewer than five minutes, Johannes would have to bring the plane down in wind-chopped, six-foot seas and hope for the best.
Johannes, a vice president with Criterion General Inc., helped build the AT&T Sports Center on the Palmer-Wasilla Highway. His wife, Karis, 48, is a popular soccer coach there. She sat in the back of the plane the day of the crash, July 24.
Read More: http://www.frontiersman.com
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