Life is short

We were in the newsroom working Saturday afternoon when the call came across the scanner that two small planes had collided in mid-air.

It came on the heals of a crash July 24 that nearly claimed four Mat-Su Valley residents who were forced down in Cook Inlet.

Before that, we had a series of plane crashes with no injuries. First there was Joe Pendergrass, 67, who was headed home May 18 after some recreational flying when his Piper PA-12 Bush plane lost power.

Then 10 days later on May 28 a plane loaded with would-be skydivers clipped a tree on takeoff from a small Fairview Loop-area strip and crashed onto a nearby lawn. No one was hurt.

In one week in July, two planes went down, but no one was injured.

The first came July 6 near the Knik River when the state’s Department of Military and Veterans Affairs, the Alaska National Guard sent a helicopter to pick up two people who crashed there in a small plane.

The second was on July 9 when Alaska State Troopers launched a helicopter to responded to a downed airplane in the Point MacKenzie area. Troopers said the pilot and his four passengers were unharmed.

Sadly, Saturday’s mid-air crash reportedly claimed the lives of pilot Corey Carlson, wife Hetty and their daughters, Ella, 5, and Addie, 3. We join their friends and families in mourning their loss.

Next week, Alaska will mourn others lost to a plane crash. Tuesday, Aug. 9 marks the one-year anniversary of the plane crash near Dillingham that claimed the life of former U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens and four others.

After we posted the breaking news about the mid-air crash to our Facebook site Saturday, a reader asked why Alaska has so many plane crashes.

Here’s our answer. While airplanes are not designed to fail, sometimes they do fail due to weather, mechanical faults or pilot error. And since Alaska has six times as many pilots and 14 times as many airplanes per capita as the Lower 48, we also see plane crashes with greater frequency.

According to the Alaska Air Carriers Association, Alaska has 10,649 pilots — one registered pilot for every 58 residents — and a fleet of 10,792 mostly single-engine aircraft.

Within the Alaska’s more than 3 million square miles, are 256 state-owned airports, including 172 gravel airports, 46 paved airports, 37 seaplane bases and one heliport.

Why do we have so many more planes and pilots than our countrymen in the Lower 48?

Because 82 percent of Alaska communities are not accessible by road, therefore Alaska has developed the largest aviation system in the U.S. with 1.6 million landings recorded annually.

In the Valley on Sunday, volunteers dedicated a newly created Alaska Airmen’s Memorial at Wolf Lake. The first three names honored there are “Wild Bill” Michel, John Eschleman and Paul Quartly, who all died Aug. 1, 2010, in a plane crash in Denali National Park.

No matter how careful or healthy we try to be, life is short. Take care of each other.