Transportation

Federal officials on Wednesday approved most of Alaska’s four-year statewide transportation improvement program, or STIP, but not before excluding six projects from among the hundreds planned for coming years.

The partial approval brought a sense of relief to state legislators in the Capitol on Wednesday. It came after the agency, in an extraordinary action, rejected the state’s first submission, citing 24 pages of flaws with the $5.6 billion plan.

The STIP is required by the federal government as a precondition for receiving the federal grants that pay for most of Alaska’s budget for roads, trails, bridges and tunnels. Had the plan been fully rejected a second time, the refusal would have endangered parts of the summer construction season, with economic ripple effects across Alaska.

Among the six items excluded this week were $68.7 million earmarked for repairs to the Port of Alaska in Anchorage and the state’s plan to use $19.8 million in existing ferry ticket sales to match federal grants for ferry-related projects. An official with the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities said both items should still be funded, albeit in ways outside the STIP.

The six exclusions identified by the Federal Highway Administration:

• $500,000 for planning to improve passenger rail service to places between Fairbanks and Seward, including Anchorage, Whittier, Wasilla, Talkeetna, Denali National Park and Nenana;
• $7.1 million to replace a bridge on Aurora Drive in Fairbanks over Noyes Slough;
• $68.7 million for part of the Port of Alaska project in Anchorage;
• $407,284 for a program intended to plan for disaster recovery;
• The state’s plan to use $19.8 million in existing ferry ticket sales to match federal grants for ferry-related projects;
• and $23.2 million for bridge and tunnel inspections.

In a letter dated Wednesday, FHWA division administrator Sandra Garcia-Aline said the agency appreciated its work with the state Department of Transportation and Public Facilities over the past month but outlined some continued problems that could be addressed and fixed through amendments to the transportation plan.

Three projects — the railroad plan, Fairbanks bridge and Port of Alaska work — need to be amended into local planning office documents.

Shannon McCarthy, director of communications for the state DOT, said the agency “mistakenly put the (Port of Alaska work) into the STIP.” Money for the project was requested by municipal officials and should have been listed in a local transportation improvement projects list, not the statewide list.

The Fairbanks bridge work has already been done, McCarthy said, but the state listed it incorrectly in the STIP.

When it comes to ferry funding, McCarthy said the state is pursuing a different approval method outside the STIP and incorrectly included the money within the plan.

The disaster planning program didn’t meet federal standards for being labeled a group project, FHWA officials wrote.

In addition to the projects excluded from Wednesday’s approval, federal officials also critiqued the process used by the state to write the STIP, noting that public comments weren’t accepted after a 45-day period, and that the state didn’t properly document its consultation with tribes.

People who were aboard a Boeing 737 Max 9 jet whose door plug was explosively expelled after departing an airport in Portland, Oregon in January are being contacted by the FBI about a criminal investigation.

“I’m contacting you because we have identified you as a possible victim of a crime,” the letter from a victim specialist with the FBI’s Seattle Division begins.

The message, a copy of which was shared with NPR by Mark Lindquist, an attorney representing passengers, lists an investigative case number and tells the passengers they should contact the FBI through an email address set up specifically for people who were on the flight.

“We are pleased the DOJ is investigating,” Lindquist said. “We want answers, accountability, and safer planes. Pressure from the DOJ should help.”

Lindquist, who represents 27 of the 171 passengers on the Boeing airliner, says his clients will speak to federal investigators if they’re asked.

When asked about the investigation and the letters to potential victims on Friday, a spokesperson for the FBI’s office in Seattle told NPR, “Per DOJ policy, the FBI does not confirm or deny the existence of an investigation.” A Boeing representative said the company also declines to comment.

News emerged earlier this month that the Department of Justice was opening a criminal investigation into Alaska Airlines Flight 1282, which took off from Portland shortly after 5 p.m. PST on Jan. 5, bound for Ontario, California.

The plane climbed above 16,000 feet, but a rapid decompression from losing the large panel terrified passengers and sucked phones and other items out of the gaping hole in the fuselage. The flight returned to the airport and made an emergency landing almost exactly 20 minutes after it took off.

At least two groups of passengers have filed lawsuits against Boeing and Alaska Airlines alleging negligence and other failures. Plaintiffs in one lawsuit include Huy Tran, who was seated one row behind the door plug.

“It’s not like when somebody bumps your car on the freeway,” Huy recently told Portland TV station KPTV. “It’s like you almost died and the feelings that come with that.”

The National Transportation Safety Board’s preliminary report found that four important bolts were missing from the Boeing plane — bolts that were meant to prevent the door plug from sliding upward, the agency said.

The debacle is the latest black eye for Boeing, whose reputation was already tarnished by deadly crashes of its 737 Max 8 jets in 2018 and 2019. The Max 8 version of the 737 is around 9 feet shorter than the Max 9.

The door plug failure has put new scrutiny on the deal Boeing reached with the Justice Department to settle a criminal charge related to those crashes, which killed 346 people. The deal angered many families who lost loved ones in the crashes, who said it was too lenient and failed to hold the company and its employees accountable.

Boeing had been accused of engaging in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the Federal Aviation Administration, as the regulator evaluated its 737 MAX airplane.

“Federal prosecutors say key Boeing employees ‘deceived the FAA,’ misleading the safety regulators about a new flight control system on the 737 Max called MCAS,” as NPR reported in January of 2021.

The deferred prosecution agreement had been set to expire three years after it was filed on Jan. 7, 2021. But the agreement also allows the DOJ’s Fraud Section to extend its heightened scrutiny for up to an additional year if Boeing is found to have failed to fulfill its obligations — including the airplane company’s promise to strengthen its compliance and reporting programs.

While the deal was set to expire on Jan. 7 of this year, that doesn’t mean the charges would be automatically dismissed on that date.

“Six months after the Agreement’s expiration,” the agreement states, “the Fraud Section shall seek dismissal with prejudice of the Information filed against the Company … and agree not to file charges in the future against the Company based on the conduct” related to the prosecutors’ allegations.

Copyright 2024 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

“I don’t really know where we are going,” said Drake Olson on a recent joyride shortly after takeoff from the Haines airport in his 1979 Piper Super Cub. “It’s all just one big feel out.”

It’s a clear blue day with only a few clouds at the edge of the skyline, but Olson is intently focused on the instruments in front of him. He keeps a steady conversation going, but it’s clear his mind is on the task in front of him as he reacts to minute pressure and wind differences as the plane gains elevation.

The plane wobbles slightly. He comments on the cold air burbling off the Ferebee Glacier, and the shifting storm patterns that are transitioning from south to north during the morning, making the air “confused.”

“If you’re thinking straight, you’re always feeling, sensing, watching,” says the 68-year-old. “All of us — no matter what you’re doing — you’re trying to get in that state of flow where you’re focused and there’s no noise.”

Olson finds that flow state when he’s fulfilling a childhood dream of flying.

His passion has helped him carve out a unique niche in the Southeast Alaska flying community ferrying climbers, skiers and paddlers to remote sites in the vast and varied mountain ranges around the Chilkat Valley and beyond. Olson’s natural inclination — developed for years as a professional race car driver in his 20s — has kept him and his clients safe since 1997 when he started Fly Drake, his charter flying service that he continues to operate today.

One of his specialties is glacier landings, in which pilots must not only deal with wind and weather, but also the changing ice forms like crevasses on the surface.

“There’s not a lot of demand — it’s pretty niche,” said Doug Riemer, a longtime pilot who runs Nordic Air in Petersburg.

Olson’s service has allowed him to pioneer recreational access around the Chilkat Valley, where helicopter flying is restricted to narrow corridors in the Upper Valley. Olson has developed a reputation among hardcore adventurers for his skill, humor and folk philosophy.

“He knows the area so well and he’s at one with the land out there. You feel comfortable when you’re flying with him,” said Ryland Bell, a professional snowboarder who lives in the Chilkat Valley.

A childhood dream interrupted

Olson dreamed of following the footsteps of his father, a pilot who flew reconnaissance planes for the Navy.

“Ever since I had consciousness, it’s been airplanes. Airplanes were so cool as a kid,” said Olson.

But his dad, who was mostly emotionally distant, was focused on sports cars, horses and beer, discouraged the younger Olson, who had a heart murmur that would have excluded him from the service. The family kept horses and lived on a farm in Connecticut.

Despite his hope to fly, Olson got his first taste for engines as a race car driver. He started on an amateur circuit as a young man. He showed a natural ability to find efficient lines around a race track. Soon, he was traveling around the country in a tattered pickup truck he used as a camper to sleep in. The 1983 rig is still parked in his hangar at the Haines Airport, with 375,000 miles on the odometer.

“I lived like a dog,” he said.

With his talent, he soon had engine builders and dealers lined up to get him to drive their cars.

He had success in international racing, notching big wins even as a relatively unknown upstart.

But before long, the realities of the sport caught up to him. A GT prototype he was driving left the ground because of an air disturbance, and he got in a serious crash.

“I was lucky to survive,” he said. He continued to race for three more years after that, but felt rattled by the crash, and felt commodified by sponsors.

He started dabbling in flying and soon met Paul Swanstrom whom he flew with to Haines. (Swanstrom declined to comment on this story.) He flew around Alaska for the next two weeks. He had a vision of what ski planes could do in a country like Alaska.

“I said ‘This is it’,” said Olson.

He returned south and bought a Cessna 180, which he still flies. Within a few years, he had moved to Haines and started working as a pilot. In 1997, he decided to open what became known as Fly Drake.

Fly Drake takes off

From his hangar at the Haines Airport, Olson runs the business by himself, waking up early in the morning to do maintenance.

It hasn’t been easy. Olson is no fan of the paperwork and maintenance that is required of the job when he’d rather be flying. He lives a modest life, driving a 1987 VW sedan and chopping cords wood to heat his shop and home.

He’s learned some hard lessons through some close calls.

A change in lighting during the day can make a safe flight turn precarious. Winds can shift in minutes, and weather can appear out of nowhere.

“I always feel like I’m one little problem away from disaster,” he said.

For glacier landings, a relatively common occurrence is attempting a landing on snow that isn’t hard enough to support a plane landing. Olson has had trips where he and his crew have had to dig for hours to build a ramp out of a pit in the snow.

Through it all, he’s learned to trust himself, and to not get caught in the excitement.
“You learn to leave your ego in a drawer,” he said.

He pointed to a duo of internationally known snowboarders, Vincent De Le Rue and Sam Anthamatten, who visited a few years ago with a handful of spots mapped out. When he flew out there, there was mostly bare rock and ice, not the fluted snow spines that most riders seek. He realized that the famous snowboarders didn’t know the area well enough to pinpoint the right spots on a map. He ended up suggesting another area full of powder-covered spines that he’d seen earlier. (Anthematten and De Le Rue did not respond to messages to confirm the details of this story.)

“You realize the customer is not always right, in fact the customer is often wrong,” he said.
His reputation and the niche he’s carved out has earned him modest renown for his appearances in high profile ski films, including the 2014 Teton Gravity Research film “Deeper.” The film features Jeremy Jones, an internationally-known snowboarder, pioneering multi-day trips in remote areas of Southeast Alaska.

Olson said for the film, he and Jones were able to find what became known as the “spine institute” in the Fairweather Mountains, a magnificent array of snow spines coming down the mountain, that the athletes considered some of the best conditions they’d ever encountered for boarding. For the crew, it felt like a pioneering way of accessing the mountains using planes instead of helicopters.

“It was magic. It was magic for me. It was magic for them,” said Olson. Still, the conditions were fleeting. Olson said the conditions there haven’t been the same since.

Ryland Bell is featured in the film, and had been flying with Olson for years. He said he always feels safe flying with Olson, even while the latter appears relaxed, joking with the passengers and playing music through the headsets.

“So many other pilots are very serious and don’t want to shoot the shit too much,” said Bell. “To a certain extent the vibe I get from them is they’re nervous.”

Bell recalled one trip where his climbing partner had been dropped off by Olson a few days before, only to realize they didn’t have a second sleeping bag. A few days later during a short break in the weather, Olson was able to land and drop off more gear. The weather window was short, and the crew scrambled to get everything unloaded as a wall of dark storm clouds rolled towards them. Olson jumped into the cockpit and headed straight for the clouds.

“He just disappears into the wall — it’s full ‘Hidalgo’ — a sandstorm over the desert,” said Bell referring to the 2004 film about a horseback adventure competition set in Arabia.
Olson, for his part, still has his doubts about whether the risks are worth it.

“You’ve got to really want it. Sometimes I wonder if I really want it that bad,” he said.

For now, the thrill of finding his flow state is too strong to resist.

This story originally appeared in the Chilkat Valley News and is republished here with permission.

Police in Charleston, S.C., are investigating the death of John Barnett, a former Boeing quality control manager who became a whistleblower when he went public with his concerns about serious safety issues in the company’s commercial airplanes.

Barnett’s body was found in a vehicle in a Holiday Inn parking lot in Charleston on Saturday, police said. One day earlier, he testified about the string of problems he says he identified at Boeing’s plant where he once helped inspect the 787 aircraft before delivery to customers.

Police say officers were sent to the hotel to conduct a welfare check after people were unable to contact Barnett, who had traveled to Charleston to testify in his lawsuit against Boeing.

“Upon their arrival, officers discovered a male inside a vehicle suffering from a gunshot wound to the head,” police said in a statement sent to NPR. “He was pronounced deceased at the scene.”

The office of Charleston County Coroner Bobbi Jo O’Neal said that Barnett, who had been living in Louisiana after retiring from Boeing, died “from what appears to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound.”

Charleston police say detectives are actively investigating the case and are awaiting a formal cause of death as they try to determine the circumstances surrounding Barnett’s death.

Barnett, who spent decades working for Boeing at its plants in Everett, Wash., and North Charleston, S.C., had repeatedly alleged that Boeing’s manufacturing practices had declined — and that rather than improve them, he added, managers had pressured workers not to document potential defects and problems.

Barnett, 62, made international headlines in April of 2019 when he and other former Boeing employees spoke to The New York Times about what he called shoddy manufacturing problems at Boeing. Barnett accused the company of adopting a culture that prioritized raw numbers and profits over quality — and by extension, passenger safety.

“As a quality manager at Boeing, you’re the last line of defense before a defect makes it out to the flying public,” Barnett told the newspaper. “And I haven’t seen a plane out of Charleston yet that I’d put my name on saying it’s safe and airworthy.”

By the time the article appeared, Barnett had already filed a whistleblower complaint against Boeing, saying that his attempts to raise quality and safety problems had been ignored and that he was punished for continuing to flag them.

A panel of federal appeals court judges heard oral arguments Thursday in a case with hundreds of millions of dollars on the line for Anchorage. The dispute stems from botched construction work on the city’s port that began in the early 2000s.

The particulars of the case deal with the intricacies of contract law and how damages are calculated. A federal trial court judge decided in 2022 that the federal Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration breached its contracts with the city by failing to fulfill its project oversight duties. The trial court judge said the Maritime Administration owes the city a whopping $367 million. 

The Maritime Administration appealed. A panel of judges in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C., finally heard arguments in the case on Thursday.

“We feel the oral arguments went great,” said Luke Patrick, a spokesperson for Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson’s office. “And we feel that the MOA has positioned itself well and we’re optimistic that the outcome will be in our favor.”

The Maritime Administration basically argued that it wasn’t obligated by a 2003 agreement with the city to deliver a defect-free port structure. And, in a subsequent 2011 agreement having to do with how to manage claims against the contractors on the project, Maritime Administration argued it wasn’t obligated to pursue litigation on the city’s behalf.

Department of Justice attorney Evan Wisser argued the case for the Maritime Administration. Here’s a sample of how that went.

“So our argument there is that the trial court simply misinterpreted the plain language of that clause, which says — ”

Appeals court judge Richard Taranto interrupted: “Assume I disagree with you.”

“If you disagree with that,” Wisser continued, “then we have no other argument about the breach on that point.”

The judges seemed a lot less skeptical as they listened to the attorney representing the city, Jason Smith.

Referring to trial court Judge Edward Damich’s opinion, Smith said, “There is not one single witness of the 24 who testified over the course of this trial who disagreed that MARAD had an obligation to design and deliver a port for the Municipality of Anchorage. Those are the witnesses offered by the municipality, and those are the witnesses that were offered by the government. They all said the exact same thing.”

The underlying work led to unstable and hazardous sheet-piling and land at the port, and years of setbacks.

There is no set timeline for when a decision is due from the appeals court, but many local officials are closely following the case. Some state lawmakers may be, too, as they consider two bills that propose the state take over the Don Young Port of Alaska, including whatever cash award the city may be due from this litigation.

WASHINGTON — More than two months after a door plug panel blew off a Boeing 737 Max 9 jet in midair, the top federal safety investigator says Boeing still has not provided key information that could shed light on what went wrong.

National Transportation Safety Board chair Jennifer Homendy told the Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday that Boeing has not revealed who was responsible for failing to reattach the door plug properly at the company’s factory near Seattle.

“It’s absurd that two months later, we don’t have that,” Homendy said.

The NTSB said in its preliminary report last month that four key bolts which are supposed to hold the door plug in place were missing when the plane left Boeing’s factory last year. The report found the door plug was opened to allow for repair work on misdrilled rivets on the fuselage while the plane was being assembled.

But Homendy says the NTSB is still unable to determine who opened and closed the door plug.

“Boeing has not provided us with documents and information we have requested numerous times,” Homendy told the committee.

“Are you telling us that even two months later you still do not know who actually opened the door plug?,” asked Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), the committee’s ranking member.

“That’s correct, Senator. We don’t know,” Homendy replied. “And it’s not for lack of trying.”

After looking through emails and text messages, Homendy said investigators believe the work on the door plug took place on two days in mid-September.

The NTSB has asked Boeing to provide documentation of when it was performed and by whom, Homendy said. But Boeing has told investigators that “they can’t find it,” she said.

Investigators have also been seeking the names of the 25 Boeing employees who are part of the team that opens and closes door plugs. But so far, Homendy says the plane-maker has not provided those names.

A Boeing spokesman disputed Homendy’s account in an emailed statement to NPR. “Since the first moments following the Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 accident, we have worked proactively and transparently to fully support the NTSB’s investigation,” said Boeing’s Connor Greenwood.

“Early in the investigation, we provided the NTSB with names of Boeing employees, including door specialists, who we believed would have relevant information. We have now provided the full list of individuals on the 737 door team, in response to a recent request,” Greenwood said.

Mounting frustration with the company seemed to cross party lines at Wednesday’s hearing.

Senator Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), the committee’s chair, called Boeing’s lack of cooperation “beyond disappointing.”

Senator Cruz called the company’s response to investigators “unacceptable.” He asked the NTSB to report back in a week to say whether Boeing had agreed to share the names and documents that investigator’s requested.

The senators on this committee have not forgotten how Boeing initially deflected responsibility after two 737 Max 8 crashes in 2018 and 2019 killed 346 people.

It’s possible that the records the NTSB is seeking now do not exist, Homendy said. If they don’t, that would raise serious questions about the company’s quality control practices, she said.

“We have been informed that they have a procedure to maintain documents on when work is performed and including when door plugs are open, closed or removed,” she said. “We have not been able to verify that. And without that information, that raises concerns about quality assurance, quality management, safety management systems within Boeing.”

Boeing also acknowledged the possibility that the documents the NTSB is seeking may not exist.

“If the door plug removal was undocumented there would be no documentation to share,” Greenwood said in his statement. “We will continue to cooperate fully and transparently with the NTSB’s investigation.”

Regulators at the Federal Aviation Administration are also concerned about what they’ve called “systemic quality-control issues” at Boeing and its suppliers. They’ve given the company until late May to come up with a plan to address those problems.

Copyright 2024 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.