Famed Alaskan bush pilot and ex-reality show star dies in plane crash

A famed bush pilot and former star of a Discovery Channel series documenting his uncharted flights into the Alaska wilderness died in a plane crash Friday, along with his passenger, according to state law enforcement.

Witnesses told Alaska State Troopers they saw Jim Tweto taking off in a Cessna 180 with 45-year-old Shane Reynolds of Idaho, but the plane appeared to not be able to climb in elevation, and witnesses saw it crash.

A satellite device on the aircraft sent troopers an SOS signal at 11:48 a.m. indicating that the plane had crashed about 35 miles northeast of the coastal village of Shaktoolik. Troopers reported finding Tweto’s and Reynolds’ bodies at the crash site.

Ariel Tweto shared news of her 68-year-old father’s death on Saturday. “My dad and a wonderful hunting guide and friend of our family passed away this afternoon,” she wrote on Instagram, adding: “I didn’t think anything could hurt this bad.”

Many met the Tweto family through the Discovery Channel’s “Flying Wild Alaska,” which followed the family’s small airline business based in Unalakleet for three seasons, starting in 2011.

The show captured the intensity and dangers of flying in Alaska. Among the tasks Tweto was filmed tackling were airdrops, in which gear is dropped off a plane midflight. More weight means a longer landing. Sometimes airdropping gear is a necessity, so a plane can perform a shorter landing – as was the case when Tweto hauled a group of hunters loaded up for a 10-day excursion in 1-mile visibility. But at $600 an hour, it was a lucrative risk.

Tweto sometimes couldn’t get to the speed needed to take off because of snow. In one episode, after two failed takeoffs, Tweto had moose hunters drop gear and drive over the makeshift runway with their snow machine to break up the snow.

“You have to be self-sufficient out here. You have to be able to figure out how to fix a problem, because you’re 400 miles away from somebody coming out to help you, so you better figure it out,” Tweto said on camera.

Aviation is a crucial business in the nation’s largest state , because wilderness separates 82% of communities from the road system, according to the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities. There are an estimated six times as many pilots per capita and 16 times as many aircraft in Alaska compared with the rest of the country. The business rakes in about $3.8 billion annually for Alaskan aviators and ground crews.

Even the state’s capital, Juneau, isn’t directly accessible by road; people need a plane or boat to get to the city.

Airplanes often replace cars, school buses, ambulances and cargo trucks for more than 400 communities, according to Alaska transportation officials . “Without our airports, the Alaskan way of life simply would not be possible,” the department’s website reads.

Part of the reason so many people know of the Twetos and how important bush pilots are is because Alaska ran an eye-catching incentive program to get film crews up to the 49th state. It scored successes, such as the 90-plus-episode “Alaska State Troopers” and more than 100-episode “Alaska: The Last Frontier,” but also the short-lived two-episode series “Big Hair Alaska.”

Around the early 2010s, the state Legislature passed a law for the state to cover a third or sometimes nearly half of eligible budgets. Legislators ended the program in 2015, but reruns keep the Alaska investment alive and on screens.

With numerous flights and gnarly winter weather, plane crashes are frequent. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the crash that killed Tweto and Reynolds, officials said.

Tweto originally traveled north to play hockey for the University of Alaska Anchorage, according to a cached version of the Discovery Channel’s website. It was in the Last Frontier that Tweto discovered a love of flying. He took a job as a pilot out of Unalakleet in 1984. But he found more than work: His boss had a daughter named Ferno. The pair had two daughters of their own, Ayla and Ariel, by the time Tweto started his own aviation company.

The Discovery website noted how safe a pilot Tweto was: “Jim has only had one accident during his many years of flying, during a 2007 off airport landing in his Super Cub. Although Jim’s neck was broken in the accident, within months he was back to work, loading planes with essential supplies and flying the wilds of bush Alaska.”

More than a decade later, his daughter was eulogizing him. “He died doing what he truly loved,” Ariel wrote.