While it definitely feels like it’s been happening more frequently lately, commercial airline crashes are incredibly rare, especially considering how many miles they fly every year. Small, private planes, however, are a completely different story. So when former Alaska Representative Mary Peltola’s husband, Eugene, crashed a Piper Super Cub in southwest Alaska back in 2023, it was tragic but also far from unheard of. Recently, the National Transportation Safety Board concluded its investigation into the crash and believes it knows why the plane crashed — it was overloaded with moose meat.
According to the NTSB’s final report, while on a hunting trip, Peltola attempted to fly out of a remote airstrip carrying moose meat and antlers. Unfortunately for Peltola, he loaded too much weight onto the plane, putting it 117 pounds or 6% over its maximum takeoff limit. He also had a set of antlers strapped to the right wing strut, which investigators said likely contributed to the crash. Had the plane not been overloaded, the antlers may have been less of an issue, but the combination of added weight and drag ultimately proved fatal.
Wind was also reportedly a factor, with Clint Johnson, the NTSB’s Alaska Region Chief, telling Alaska’s KTUU, “Number one was, obviously, the overweight condition — no ifs, ands, or buts there. The parasitic drag from the antlers that were attached to the right wing, and then also the last thing would be the wind, the mechanical wind turbulence at the end of the takeoff area, which unfortunately, led to this accident. If you would have been able to take one of those items out, we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation. But those things all in combination led to this tragic accident.”
Allegations of negligence
Strapping antlers to the exterior of a small plane is reportedly fairly common in Alaska, but, at least on paper, you’re still required to get approval from the Federal Aviation Administration before doing so. According to the report, though, there is no evidence that Peltola’s plan had been approved to do so. And while a plane’s maximum takeoff weight can be the same as its maximum landing weight, that’s not always the case. According to the NTSB’s report, the plane likely would have still been 180 pounds over the Super Cub’s landing weight, even when accounting for the fuel consumed in the air.
In addition to Peltola overloading the plane, the report also states that it had undergone extensive repairs throughout its seven decades of service, and much of that work was done before the FAA updated its guidelines on repairs and restorations. The report didn’t draw a conclusion one way or the other as to whether or not those repairs contributed to Peltola’s crash, however, KTUU reports a lawsuit has been filed, claiming Bruce Werba and the two companies he controlled, Alaska Pike Safari’s & Wilderness Adventures and Neitz Aviation, Inc., behaved negligently and caused Peltola “to fly excessive hours, to fly without adequate sleep or rest, to fly under unreasonably dangerous conditions, and to carry an external load without the required permit.”
The lawsuit also alleges that neither of the companies named in the suit had gotten a certificate of self-insurance from the Alaska Division of Workers’ Compensation and thus deprived Peltola of the appropriate compensation. The lawsuit reportedly seeks at least $100,000 in damages, as well as a jury trial.
