barely recovered from the unnerving experience of his medivac when he heard news from a fellow pilot that Duncan Bell had crashed his plane. Bell, who was flying a medivac to the small Inuit community of Coppermine, had been lucky. He’d flown into the tundra at cruise speed on approach to the airfield. His plane had torpedoed into the snow, bounced and then careened along the surface until it eventually came to a stop. But the fuselage had remained intact and all three people aboard—Bell, his co-pilot and a nurse—had survived.
Why would Bell do something so stupid? The opportunity for Erik to ask him never arose. Bell lost his job with Ptarmigan after the crash and disappeared from the North.
Erik put Duncan Bell out of his mind. There were other things to worry about. Until his brother’s death, Erik had accepted that a certain degree of danger was part of his job. Now it seemed that bush flying was demanding too much of him. Bush operations often require pilots to overlook minor but potentially costly maintenance issues, and to push the weather.
“If we never pushed the weather,” Erik recalls his boss, Paul Jones, telling him, “we’d never stay in business.”
Erik remembers another occasion when the company asked him to fly from Fort Simpson to Fort Liard despite a severe thunderstorm warning. Erik could see enormous thunderheads rising like dark gargoyles from the horizon—a definite no-go scenario.
“Just fly around them,” he remembers Paul Jones telling him, before ushering the passengers onto the aircraft. Erik skirted the black wall for a time, flying parallel to the front, but eventually his heading led him straight into it. A gaping crevasse appeared ahead and Erik entered it. For a moment his plane seemed to hang, dreamlike, in a void of atmosphere. On either side of him clouds towered like grimy fortress walls and far, far above, he glimpsed blue sky. Light rain began to speckle the windshield, building until it ran in rivulets along the cockpit windows. Then hell erupted. The aircraft pitched violently for a moment before smashing into a seemingly solid wall of obstruction. Erik wrestled with the controls and the artificial horizon gauge oscillated as the plane shuddered violently. He heard a passenger vomiting and the smell filled the small cabin, heightening the sour taste already in Erik’s mouth. Lightning split the clouds and the sky hummed hot and electric around him. Seconds later the air cracked with a deafening boom of thunder. Erik felt hisinsides churn, and a clammy wetness glossed his palms where they gripped the yoke.
As he neared his destination and began his approach, a fierce crosswind pushed him off course and Erik struggled to crab back onto the glide slope path. His wheels touched down, but the runway was slick with water and the plane skidded off the end and onto the grass. For several minutes Erik sat limply in the cockpit. In the cabin no one moved. No one uttered a word. Finally, Erik mustered the energy to deplane his passengers and unload their baggage. He was scheduled to fly a return flight, but refused.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Erik told Jones. “We just got the shit kicked out of us.”
In the ensuing weeks, Erik’s relationship with the company further deteriorated. He began refusing flights and insisting on immediate repairs. Tensions reached a breaking point on April 21, 1982, the day before his twenty-second birthday. Erik’s former high school sweetheart, Lee-Ann Rydeen, had come north for the occasion. She arrived in Fort Simpson the day Erik was to fly the company’s new engineer to Cambridge Bay, and was going to come along for the ride.
As Erik was preparing for takeoff, Jones radioed him from his incoming flight. “Shut her down,” Jones told him. Within moments Jones was on the ground and striding toward Erik’s plane.
“What’s she doing here?” Jones asked, nodding toward the young woman in the co-pilot’s seat.
Erik explained
Why would Bell do something so stupid? The opportunity for Erik to ask him never arose. Bell lost his job with Ptarmigan after the crash and disappeared from the North.
Erik put Duncan Bell out of his mind. There were other things to worry about. Until his brother’s death, Erik had accepted that a certain degree of danger was part of his job. Now it seemed that bush flying was demanding too much of him. Bush operations often require pilots to overlook minor but potentially costly maintenance issues, and to push the weather.
“If we never pushed the weather,” Erik recalls his boss, Paul Jones, telling him, “we’d never stay in business.”
Erik remembers another occasion when the company asked him to fly from Fort Simpson to Fort Liard despite a severe thunderstorm warning. Erik could see enormous thunderheads rising like dark gargoyles from the horizon—a definite no-go scenario.
“Just fly around them,” he remembers Paul Jones telling him, before ushering the passengers onto the aircraft. Erik skirted the black wall for a time, flying parallel to the front, but eventually his heading led him straight into it. A gaping crevasse appeared ahead and Erik entered it. For a moment his plane seemed to hang, dreamlike, in a void of atmosphere. On either side of him clouds towered like grimy fortress walls and far, far above, he glimpsed blue sky. Light rain began to speckle the windshield, building until it ran in rivulets along the cockpit windows. Then hell erupted. The aircraft pitched violently for a moment before smashing into a seemingly solid wall of obstruction. Erik wrestled with the controls and the artificial horizon gauge oscillated as the plane shuddered violently. He heard a passenger vomiting and the smell filled the small cabin, heightening the sour taste already in Erik’s mouth. Lightning split the clouds and the sky hummed hot and electric around him. Seconds later the air cracked with a deafening boom of thunder. Erik felt hisinsides churn, and a clammy wetness glossed his palms where they gripped the yoke.
As he neared his destination and began his approach, a fierce crosswind pushed him off course and Erik struggled to crab back onto the glide slope path. His wheels touched down, but the runway was slick with water and the plane skidded off the end and onto the grass. For several minutes Erik sat limply in the cockpit. In the cabin no one moved. No one uttered a word. Finally, Erik mustered the energy to deplane his passengers and unload their baggage. He was scheduled to fly a return flight, but refused.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Erik told Jones. “We just got the shit kicked out of us.”
In the ensuing weeks, Erik’s relationship with the company further deteriorated. He began refusing flights and insisting on immediate repairs. Tensions reached a breaking point on April 21, 1982, the day before his twenty-second birthday. Erik’s former high school sweetheart, Lee-Ann Rydeen, had come north for the occasion. She arrived in Fort Simpson the day Erik was to fly the company’s new engineer to Cambridge Bay, and was going to come along for the ride.
As Erik was preparing for takeoff, Jones radioed him from his incoming flight. “Shut her down,” Jones told him. Within moments Jones was on the ground and striding toward Erik’s plane.
“What’s she doing here?” Jones asked, nodding toward the young woman in the co-pilot’s seat.
Erik explained
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