Federal investigators say the plane that crashed in September 2023, killing former U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola’s husband, was overloaded with cargo.
That’s according to the National Transportation Safety Board’s final report released Tuesday on the crash near St. Mary’s that resulted in the death of pilot Eugene “Buzzy” Peltola Jr., 57. Peltola was a well-respected Bethel community member who’d previously served as Alaska regional director for the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs. He retired from the position to support his wife’s successful run for Congress.
According to the report, in the days before the accident, Peltola was transporting a group of hunters from Holy Cross to an airstrip near St. Mary’s, where the hunters set up camp. The hunters killed a moose, and Peltola made a series of two flights to transport the meat and other remains back to Holy Cross.
The report says the first flight on Sept. 12, 2023 was uneventful. During the second flight later that day, Peltola’s plane was ferrying about 117 more pounds of cargo than its maximum takeoff weight, or about 6% over. Additionally, Peltola had strapped the moose’s antlers to the plane's right wing strut. Transporting antlers that way isn’t unusual, the report says. But NTSB Alaska chief Clint Johnson says the practice requires formal approval from the Federal Aviation Administration, which he says had not been done.
“What we do is we look at the parasitic drag that the antlers would produce," Johnson said. "Obviously, with that large of an area out there, it acts like a small sail for the most part.”
The second flight took off at around 8:45 p.m. The report says that as the plane reached the end of the runway, “it pitched up and turned sharply to the right; however, rather than climbing as before, it flew behind the adjacent ridgeline and out of view.”
Hunters headed up and over the ridge, where they saw the plane had crashed. The hunters pulled Peltola from the crash site, according to the report, and one of them issued an SOS from a satellite phone. Though hunters were able to bundle Peltola in a blanket near a heater, he ultimately succumbed to wounds from the crash after about two hours. A National Guard helicopter sent from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage arrived about six hours after the crash occurred, at around 1:50 a.m. the following morning.
The report attributed the crash to Peltola operating the plane while it exceeded its maximum weight limit and installing an unapproved external load to the plane which resulted in “a loss of airplane control during takeoff into an area of mechanical turbulence and downdrafts.”
“Realistically, if we were able to take one of those items out of that chain, we probably wouldn't be having this conversation," Johnson said. "But unfortunately and obviously, that was not the case. We had the tragic accident as a result.”
Investigators added that “there was no evidence that any of the meat had shifted in flight, and the antlers remained firmly attached to the wing strut and were not interfering with any of the flight control cables.”
Unrelated to the release of the NTSB report, Peltola’s widow, former Congresswoman Mary Peltola, filed a lawsuit Friday against the owners of the plane her husband was flying. The suit alleges negligence by hunting guide Bruce Werba and two companies under Werba’s control, which caused Gene Peltola’s death.
