What happened to Jim Tweto?

Silvaire

Silvaire

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Silvaire
Seems like there was a thread here but it's gone now and even a Google search pretty much shows complete silence over the past week.
 
Okay but shouldn't it also be here as in aircraft mishap? I know who he was, just want to know what happened.
 
It's a mishap but there's no accident report for us to speculate about. This is all we got. It ain't much and I haven't seen this posted yet.

https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/315363

"Confidence Rating:
CR4.svg
Little or no information is available"
 
Yea it's kind of like an attitude that - it's Alaska, this is normal. I remember the episode where he was taking a couple of hunters to a remote ridge and had to do multiple passes to air drop their gear before landing. Then, on take-off his rudder pedal broke so he had to hop into the right seat to get back home. He talked calmly about it, this is what I do every day. Of course it was a TV series so you expect some drama but that show didn't have to hype it up too much beyond what was real.
 
Took off with one passenger, aircraft failed to climb adequately.
 
Stewartb said:
Took off with one passenger, aircraft failed to climb adequately.
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That's the "what". But no one knows the "why" yet. Wonder how long the NTSB investigation will take.
 
Well known pilot? I’d guess well over a year. That’s been typical lately. Doesn’t make much difference.
 
Stewartb said:
Well known pilot? I’d guess well over a year. That’s been typical lately. Doesn’t make much difference.
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Fatals usually take over a year, even for just “regular” pilots. I was involved as a LEO in several plane crash responses, and the final report on even a couple of the non-fatals took nearly a year.
 
Silvaire said:
Yea it's kind of like an attitude that - it's Alaska, this is normal. I remember the episode where he was taking a couple of hunters to a remote ridge and had to do multiple passes to air drop their gear before landing. Then, on take-off his rudder pedal broke so he had to hop into the right seat to get back home. He talked calmly about it, this is what I do every day. Of course it was a TV series so you expect some drama but that show didn't have to hype it up too much beyond what was real.
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I saw that one too . . . really sad
 
Stewartb said:
You guys do know that Alaska reality shows aren’t real, right?
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There I was approaching the airport in a 70 year old airplane (Stinson 108) as the storm approached from the opposite direction.
The runway was drifting with snow and if not the possibility of the plane flipping over if it hit to large drift was real (I had taking off from the same drifted airstrip less than an hour before with no snow since), It would take every bit of my skill to safely land the old airplane using a very specific soft field landing procedure. As I arrived at the airport the opposite end of the runway became obscured with snow and I had to land downwind (5 kts) into the snow drifted runway. As we touched down big snow flakes began falling all round us and visiblity went to near zero (less 1/4 mile). The airplane would slow quickly and try to flip over every time we hit a drift, would the next one flip us over?

That really happened to me in Idaho a few years ago, but it really wasn't a big deal, the Boise airport was VFR and 10 minutes away with clear runways if I decided continuing was unsafe. But all I would have needed was a few cameras and a narrator to make a good typical reality TV clip.

Brian
CFIIG/ASEL
 
Stewartb said:
You guys do know that Alaska reality shows aren’t real, right?
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Really? Well, how about NWT or Yukon? lol. Yea we know but we still watch them right? It's called "entertainment" So a rudder pedal breaks - meh, but it's good for a couple of minutes of nail-biting between handfuls of popcorn on an otherwise slow Thursday evening.
 
So... A check airman for skywest who used to work for him up there and who still has friends up there had this to say...."they just do dumb things"
 
I'm pretty sure that most of us understand the reality TV shtick but despite the overcooked melodrama I watched all of the Ice Pilots and Wild Alaska episodes. My biggest gripe about it was how they would start with the initial crisis clickbait, slog you through the lead in story then the crisis comes and...a commercial. Then, after the commercial you had to go through the last seven minutes of stuff you had just watched right before the commercial all over again until you got back to the crisis. They made a half hour episode out of 12 minutes of material. But honestly, would we rather it just didn't exist at all? If you're gonna watch TV may as well have airplanes in it! I didn't know Jim Tweto personally but I don't hold the fact that he made a reality TV show against him. It was a pretty good show entertainment-wise even if it wasn't "real"
 
Checkout_my_Six said:
So....how many rudder pedals did you break? :D
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None.

But once in a 206 the seat back frame broke right as I rotated, causing a few seconds of excitement until I could get seated upright again. I did change to the right side seat for landing.
 
That's so boring...... :D
Zeldman said:
None.

But once in a 206 the seat back frame broke right as I rotated, causing a few seconds of excitement until I could get seated upright again. I did change to the right side seat for landing.
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Silvaire said:
I didn't know Jim Tweto personally but I don't hold the fact that he made a reality TV show against him. It was a pretty good show entertainment-wise even if it wasn't "real"
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Seemingly his daughter (the "star" of that show) was trying to make it in the reality TV world, some producer heard her life back story and liked it, and she talked her dad into doing the TV show as a way to help her fledgling TV career. So basically, he was guilty of being a good dad. RIP.
 
Tweto, who moved from Minnesota to Alaska to play hockey on a college scholarship, told AOPA in 2011 (the height of the television show's popularity), that Flying Wild Alaska was Ariel's idea—along with producers and executives at Discovery Channel, who gave her a viral moment on an obstacle course that led to brainstorming a show about her family's aviation business in Unalakleet. Tweto and his wife, Ferno, with whom he raised three daughters, had not been looking for television opportunities.

“I’m a proud father,” Jim Tweto told AOPA Pilot. “I’ll do whatever I can for my daughter.”

From AOPA article:
https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2023/june/20/flying-wild-alaska-star-jim-tweto-dies

RIP
 
3393RP said:
Ariel isn't a one dimensional social media gadfly.
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Indeed not. Long after Flying Wild Alaska she used to host a program called Native Shorts with Bird Runningwater on NFX (in this part of the world, at least), introducing and showing First Nations and Native American short films and videos. Not exactly the high-profile stuff you'd get from just trying to be be a social media gadfly. Yes, she was definitely the irrepressible Ariel Tweto we thought we got to know from Flying Wild Alaska, but it was another side of her completely. One of my fave obscure public TV shows…
 
Reading the NTSB prelim, the question I have (other than the winds and weight and balance) is if the control continuity is also the ability to move the elevators. If not, it would seem that the tree snag strike on the left stab could have jammed the elevator controls leading to a stall into the tundra. Looking at the photo, it seems impossible for the controls to move. It looks like a vertical impact with nothing else around in the photo. And the strike could have been due to the wind shear. In any case, it just appears like the stars weren't lining up for Jim on this takeoff.

 
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Tree hit the stab right at the root. I doubt there was enough speed after that impact for the elevator to have done anything even if it were still working. Plus we have no idea what the airspeed was if he had hit shear. Last Saturday morning I woke up to a clear calm day at the house with plans to fly down to Lompoc for the annual Cub gathering. At my airport, just 18 miles from the house, the winds were 34G42 kts so I scrubbed the mission. Later that evening AWOS was reporting 59 kt gusts but it was still calm here at home. You never know.
 
Crash site was 1200 feet from the broken tree, assuming accelerating under power. Yes, possible shear. Wondering if the stab jammed nose up. Somehow between the tree and the site it had enough vertical energy to crush the wings and tear up the front end. A flatter path wouldn’t have done that. Wreckage seems contained.
 
Skywagon horizontal stabs move (trim) on a dual jackscrew. If the stabilazer’s attachment was broken the airplane could have been uncontrollable. Elevators would be along for the ride. Given the location of that hit to the tail the prop may have been damaged before the crash, too. I’m sure the NTSB will look closelt at that, too.

radiokenai.com

Small Plane That Crashed In Rural Alaska, Killing 2, Apparently Struck Tree, Official Says

A small plane that crashed in Alaska last month, killing a bush pilot who was featured on a reality TV show and a hunting guide, apparently struck a tree during takeoff from a rural airstrip, an official said Tuesday.
radiokenai.com radiokenai.com
 
Stewartb said:
Skywagon horizontal stabs move (trim) on a dual jackscrew. If the stabilazer’s attachment was broken the airplane could have been uncontrollable. Elevators would be along for the ride. Given the location of that hit to the tail the prop may have been damaged before the crash, too. I’m sure the NTSB will look closelt at that, too.
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Juan Browne's summary has a photo suggesting the stabilizer was wrecked by the tree. The severed propeller blades apparently were at the site of the wreck, not at the tree; the engine was making power when it hit.

HHH

Screen Shot Airports Landed.png
 
The prop spinning doesn’t mean it’s balanced or making thrust. Like I sad, it would be hard for the prop not to have been damaged given where the tail hit the tree. Given time the NTSB will sort it out. I think pilot error is pretty clear, so maybe they’ll leave it at that.
 
Don't know if I would settle too hard on pilot error. The runway was within his skill set. The wind shears could claim anyone, regardless of experience. Aviation is subject to the unpredictable and the surprising. We want to believe that isn't possible, but it is.
 
The pilot decides when to go and when to sit it out. I’m very familiar with assessing swirling winds and launching over tall trees.

 
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