According to a recent report from Alaska Public Media, that state’s rate of fatal general aviation accidents was about twice that of the rest of the country until 2016 when, for unspecified reasons, it began to decline. It still remains higher than elsewhere. The gist of the article—which was motivated by the death of Eugene Peltola, husband of U.S. representative Mary Peltola, in a Piper Super Cub—was that the main problem for Alaskan pilots was lack of weather information, since the density of automated weather reporting stations in the state is half that of other parts of the country.
Actually, it would be difficult to define the main problem for pilots flying in Alaska. There are so many of them. And there is an additional problem that is created by the sheer existence of all the other problems: a certain style of flying and acceptance of risk arising from the combination of urgency and improvisation that backcountry operations entail.
