I really feel for the others that died, including a young girl. There were a couple of other kids on the plane, too, but they survived I believe.
I won't bad mouth Stevens (though he'll be forever remembered on the web for his "tubes".
He was 86, he'd had a very long life.
Also, I won't second guess why the pilot was flying in crap weather. Conditions can change very quickly out there. Though commercial AK planes are pretty good about not flying in horrible conditions.
I've been grounded for a period of time every where from the Anchorage airport, trying to get to Kodiak to trying to get out of some backwater in the islands. If there was ever a time I would have tried to walk on water, it was being stuck in some plane shed in the middle of nowhere because it was socked in. The boat had already left, so yeah. Even with the big planes that fly into Kodiak, there can be delays of 24 hours or more. Then the frantic rush to catch the next jet ...though on occasion, they can switch out to a bigger prop plane that can fly under the weather.
It is a different world. Planes are the only mode of transport into some of these regions, unless you want to try to walk.
It took the rescuers something like 12 or 20 hours to get some 20 miles north of Dillingham.
Can you tell I've been thinking about this? I've flown in a lot of little planes out there. Thought I was going to die only once....but when I opened my eyes I looked down to see a startled deer on the floor of a very tight little valley in the middle of nowhere (about 50 feet below us), because the weather had changed so rapidly and the pilot was trying to get us out of the basin we had been flying around in for a long time.. Still I had to laugh, me, the village drug dealer and 1200 pounds of salmon roe. Oh and the pilot. What a way to go.