Mosquitoes contributed to pilot’s death, NTSB says

WRANGELL-ST. ELIAS — A propeller that killed a well-known Wasilla pilot on a rural landing strip was spinning to keep mosquitoes at bay, authorities said.

Clark J. Baldwin, 62, of Wasilla, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel and teacher flew with six people and a flotilla of four planes to the Peavine Bar Airstrip near McCarthy about 11 a.m., June 4, according to a preliminary report issued by the National Transportation Safety Board.

“To stave off swarms of mosquitoes while loading the airplanes, the engines of all four airplanes were started and allowed to operate at idle, with the cockpits unattended,” the report reads.

While the group of passengers and pilots were loading gear into the right side of one plane, another idling plane began to move slowly forward. Baldwin tried to get around the first plane to the moving plane to keep the two planes from colliding, and inadvertently ran into the back of the spinning propeller, witnesses told employees of the National Park Service and NTSB investigators.

Baldwin died instantly after being struck three times by the propeller.

The plane, a Piper PA-18-150, was registered to Hunter Creek LLC, an Eagle River-based company licensed to Mary and Richard Farah, and operated by Baldwin’s family business, Alaska Cub Training Specialists, which operates out of Wolf Creek airport in Wasilla.

Family friends recalled Baldwin as a safety-conscious, helpful man who loved flying and the outdoors. Final investigations can take months to complete.

Contact Brian O’Connor at 352-2269, brian.oconnor@frontiersman.com, or on Twitter @reporterbriano.