Floatplane Lands Safely on Inlet After Takeoff

By Kyle Hopkins, Anchorage Daily News, Alaska

May 31–Maybe two minutes after taking off from Lake Hood on Wednesday afternoon in his Cessna 185, Anchorage lawyer Jim Gottstein realized something was wrong.

At about 600 feet, the engine wasn’t giving him the power he expected, and Gottstein couldn’t maintain altitude over Cook Inlet.

“We started heading back to Lake Hood, and it looked like it was too close, that we might not make it back … so we decided the best thing to do would be to put it in the water where we would be safe,” he said.

Known best for fighting legal battles on behalf of the mentally ill — he created a nonprofit law firm called the Law Project for Psychiatric Rights and gained national attention for a fight with pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly — Gottstein earned his pilot’s license in high school. On Wednesday he had a flight instructor aboard and was in the middle of a flight review pilots must take every two years when the engine trouble began.

Between about 2 and 2:30 p.m., he said, he made the emergency landing in Cook Inlet near the small-boat launch.

Before long, Fire Department and U.S. Coast Guard boats motored out to the plane. A family visiting from Barrow watched from the windy shore as the Cessna bobbed in the frigid water and rescuers looked for the safest place to beach the plane.

“I’m not a pilot, and I can tell that thing’s not running right,” Anchorage Fire Department battalion chief John Adamson said as the Cessna taxied under its own power toward the boat launch. It beached in the mud, not far from the spot where a fisherman had just backed his boat trailer into the water.

Gottstein, who used to play in Bootlegger Cove as a kid, stepped out into the wet, sucking mud. With the muck pulling at his boots, it took him 10 minutes to walk less than 100 yards to the road — the worst part of the ordeal, he said.

“I’m glad I’m here,” Gottstein told Adamson. “I’m glad the plane’s not banged up.”

He said later that the throttle cable might have broken, and that he’d flown the plane just days before.

Next, Gottstein’s flight instructor and only passenger, Dick Ardaiz, stepped out and firefighters helped him to shore. Neither man looked hurt, and talk quickly turned to figuring out what to do about the plane, which was now temporarily anchored and starting to float on the incoming tide.

The next step?

“Get it fixed and fly it off,” Gottstein said.

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