Plane goes down in lake; pilot rescued by boat

WASILLA — A pilot who ditched his plane in Lake Lucille over the weekend was the beneficiary of mostly his own flying skills, Wasilla police said.

Deputy Police Chief Greg Wood said the pilot, Bruce Christie, 49, of Wasilla, told police he decided to put his 1961 Comanche into the water “to avoid casualties on the ground.”

The plane in question was registered to Christie, a pilot whose license and certifications turn up current in Federal Aviation Administration databases. After ditching in the lake Saturday afternoon, Christie was unhurt and was taken to shore by locals with a pontoon boat who saw the plane come down.

“The two guys watched him do the water landing said that he did a superb job of landing the aircraft and it appeared to be a very soft landing,” Wood said.

He said it was likely the plane, which has wings attached on the bottom rather than the top of the fuselage, had its retractable landing gear up.

“Otherwise, if the gear had been down, it surely would have flipped,” Wood said. “My guess is he just slid it right across the top of the water until it sunk.”

When officers left the scene, Wood said, the plane was still in the lake, submerged in about eight feet of water.

Wood said, according to police reports, Christie told officers his engine had been running rough before it cut out.

“He had flown about an hour and a half the previous day without any incidents and had checked his fuel, inspected it, and it was clean,” Wood said.

Christie tried to apply “carburetor heat” without success, Wood said. Carburetors, he said, tend to ice up, which makes the engine lose power and run rough.

“Even at 60 degrees ambient temperature it will form ice in the carburetor,” Wood said, which is why most planes are outfitted with, “a little cable switch that you pull and it diverts heat from the engine to the carburetor.”

Wood said pilots are required to know the ins and outs of aircraft engines as part of their training. The knowledge, he said, saves lives. It could have saved Christie’s life in this case had something else not been wrong with the plane. As it was, Christie had to rely on good piloting skills instead.

“It’s hard to ditch an aircraft in water,” Wood said. “Usually they break up. It has to be perfect.”

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.