Ice Pilots

Looks like their scheduled passenger service is still "temporarily" grounded.

Still, I enjoyed watching it. I never knew I was always so close to instant death when I was flying north of the Arctic Circle.
 
Zeldman said:
Still, I enjoyed watching it. I never knew I was always so close to instant death when I was flying north of the Arctic Circle.
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Yeah, yeah. There is some truth to that. I will say though, one of the things that I liked about it was that *by comparison* there was like a tenth as much of that stuff as there was in Flying Wild Alaska (which, for the record, I also liked).
 
Oh yes, I enjoyed both shows. I knew most of the people in Flying Wild Alaska, I have flown most of the planes shown and been to all the airstrips. Just the editing made both shows funny to me.

I was more interested in the planes on Ice Pilots, but it did show more realistic flying than Flying Wild Alaska.

Still, both shows was made to make people that have never been to the arctic think that flying and living in Alaska/Canada is dangerous and made heroes out of the participants, which sells the show.
 
ChemGuy said:
Clearly you didn't have a good producer to let you know how much danger you were in.
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There was one episode where they talked about the difficult and dangerous maneuver to abort a landing called a 'go around' (with a long runway, plenty of fuel, and all engines functioning). That one had me scratching my head, but as far as reality tv over-drama goes, it wasn't so bad over all. I was surprised that my wife enjoyed it and wanted to watch them.
 
Awesome! I liked that show, but I only got to see a handful of episodes. Looks like I've got good entertainment available now.

A lot of folks gripe about the drama injected into these kinds of shows. It doesn't bother me much. Sure some of it might be a bit annoying, but if it has airplanes in it, I'm in.
 
Damn, why did they have to go and put that freakin' show on Netflix?


Sigh... guess the wife will just have to live with me watching more aviation on the TV.
 
Zeldman said:
Oh yes, I enjoyed both shows. I knew most of the people in Flying Wild Alaska, I have flown most of the planes shown and been to all the airstrips. Just the editing made both shows funny to me.

I was more interested in the planes on Ice Pilots, but it did show more realistic flying than Flying Wild Alaska.

Still, both shows was made to make people that have never been to the arctic think that flying and living in Alaska/Canada is dangerous and made heroes out of the participants, which sells the show.
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Flying and living in Alaska/Canada is not dangerous?

Grizzly bears! Wild salmon!! Women in parkas!!! Inverted density altitudes. :eek: There's no end of things that could kill you up there...
 
GRG55 said:
Flying and living in Alaska/Canada is not dangerous?

Grizzly bears! Wild salmon!! Women in parkas!!! Inverted density altitudes. :eek: There's no end of things that could kill you up there...
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Women in parkas..... really got to be careful there for sure..!!!! :hairraise: :lol::lol:
 
Zeldman said:
I knew the family, but she was something like 10 years old at the time.
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That'd be a whole different kind of trouble. :eek:

The whole family seemed like good folks on the show. Much better than anyone on any other "reality" show. I can barely watch most reality shows but I watched Flying Wild Alaska quite a bit even knowing that they were overly sensationalizing it. But I guess that is what the rest of the public likes to see. I on the other hand would have been fine with it being a little more on the reality side with some educational bits thrown in.

Ice Pilots on the other hand was a show I only caught sporadically but still found fun to watch. Now that it is on Netflix, I need to do my requisite binge watching.
 
You can watch the whole series on YouTube as well. Plus three other similar mini-series.
 
Zeldman said:
Looks like their scheduled passenger service is still "temporarily" grounded.

Still, I enjoyed watching it. I never knew I was always so close to instant death when I was flying north of the Arctic Circle.
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Were you flying a 70 year old airplane in ten to twenty degree below zero weather into often times lousy airstrips? probably not. Buffalo joes aircraft have had numerous forced landings and in most cases all have survived, some loaded with drums of fuel. Much more dangerous than landing a 172 on a 6000 ft. Runway in summer verses putting a dc3 down on a frozen lake loaded during beginning of spring thaw. My hats off to them big time!
 
Jimmy cooper said:
Were you flying a 70 year old airplane in ten to twenty degree below zero weather into often times lousy airstrips? probably not. Buffalo joes aircraft have had numerous forced landings and in most cases all have survived, some loaded with drums of fuel. Much more dangerous than landing a 172 on a 6000 ft. Runway in summer verses putting a dc3 down on a frozen lake loaded during beginning of spring thaw. My hats off to them big time!
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No, I lived and worked north of the Arctic Circle for 7 of the 10 years I spent in Alaska and I only flew C-206/7/8 and PA-31-350 to those same type lousy strips as well as off airport landings and ice runways in -30f weather through snow with ice building up on the plane, without weather services, lots further north than Yellowknife. I have had to do unexpected landings to knock the ice off the plane because I could hold altitude or airspeed but not both at the same time. Shortest landing strip I worked out of was 800 feet. I could take the Chieftain in there loaded but had to come out empty. That includes planning minimum fuel and hoping there will be no weather diversions on the way home.

I would do beach landings in summer, frozen lake/river in winter. The local landing strips were just packed snow and ice and we went into those strips at night on regular scheduled services. I once landed the Chieftain on a frozen river to pick up a person that was very seriously injured in a snow machine accident. I had snow machines run up and down the longest stretch of river to smooth down the snow and ice so I could land. The same snow machines lined up on one side of the river so I could have lights to land. That person lived, by the way.

In winter I have landed in such crosswinds that the centerline of the airplane would be 20 to 30 degrees or more off the centerline of the runway at touchdown and rollout. Sliding landings and takeoffs were the norm in winter. I would land on the first half of the runway, unable to turn around and taxi because of the wind, then take off on the last half of the runway. A normal runway was 2500 feet and maybe 35 feet wide.

Most frozen lakes in my area were usable until about mid June before the ice would rot out too much to be used.

I didn't see flying in the north as all that dangerous, but I did have and showed a great respect for the area and weather and understood that one little mistake could have dire consequences. I knew my limitations, the aircraft limitations and I always had a way out. It was hard to say no to some trips, but if I said no, it was not doable.

Haven't flown a 172 since I was a mere student pilot.
 
Zeldman said:
No, I lived and worked north of the Arctic Circle for 7 of the 10 years I spent in Alaska and I only flew C-206/7/8 and PA-31-350 to those same type lousy strips as well as off airport landings and ice runways in -30f weather through snow with ice building up on the plane, without weather services, lots further north than Yellowknife. I have had to do unexpected landings to knock the ice off the plane because I could hold altitude or airspeed but not both at the same time. Shortest landing strip I worked out of was 800 feet. I could take the Chieftain in there loaded but had to come out empty. That includes planning minimum fuel and hoping there will be no weather diversions on the way home.

I would do beach landings in summer, frozen lake/river in winter. The local landing strips were just packed snow and ice and we went into those strips at night on regular scheduled services. I once landed the Chieftain on a frozen river to pick up a person that was very seriously injured in a snow machine accident. I had snow machines run up and down the longest stretch of river to smooth down the snow and ice so I could land. The same snow machines lined up on one side of the river so I could have lights to land. That person lived, by the way.

In winter I have landed in such crosswinds that the centerline of the airplane would be 20 to 30 degrees or more off the centerline of the runway at touchdown and rollout. Sliding landings and takeoffs were the norm in winter. I would land on the first half of the runway, unable to turn around and taxi because of the wind, then take off on the last half of the runway. A normal runway was 2500 feet and maybe 35 feet wide.

Most frozen lakes in my area were usable until about mid June before the ice would rot out too much to be used.

I didn't see flying in the north as all that dangerous, but I did have and showed a great respect for the area and weather and understood that one little mistake could have dire consequences. I knew my limitations, the aircraft limitations and I always had a way out. It was hard to say no to some trips, but if I said no, it was not doable.

Haven't flown a 172 since I was a mere student pilot.
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Suddenly I feel like a total wimp! ;)
 
The aircraft you flew were in an entirely different class than a DC3 or the other aircraft joe employs. Not to demean you but it's not the same at all. Arnie , who died of cancer plus two or three others were in a class by themselves at buffalo.
 
I read a book by an Alaska bush pilot, called Flying the Alaska Wild, and reading about the stuff he did, I was amazed that he lived long enough to write the book!
 
If you really want to know what flying in AK is like, read the book "map of my dead pilots" by Colleen Mondor.
 
denverpilot said:
Netflix seems to have multiple but I haven't looked to see how many.
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I looked yesterday and they have season 1 &2. I saw several seasons on line. I would not mind seeing how the show winds down but got tired of the same old Joe berating everyone that works for him.
 
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