Alaska aviation

Fairbanks, AK -If you visited Fairbanks International Airport over the weekend, you may have noticed a small construction project near one of the baggage carousels.  A local group has been working for six years to restore a biplane that once belonged to Carl Ben Eielson.  The plane has a new set of wings, a fresh coat of paint it’s now hanging once more from the ceiling of the Airport terminal.

A plaque was placed yesterday (Thurs.) at the site a plane crash that occurred on a Tanana River sandbar near Fairbanks 44 years ago. It remembers the Mitchell B-25 bomber that went down while in service as a fire fighting air tanker on June 27th 1969.  As KUAC’s Dan Bross reports, the marker was placed by a Michigan based team in Fairbanks to recover what’s left of the historic aircraft known as “Sandbar Mitchell” and restore it.   

Updated: Alaskan pilot Art Mortvedt has returned to Fairbanks after a solo flight to the North Pole in the same single-engine aircraft that he flew to the South Pole in 1999. It was his third attempt to accomplish the mission, which Mortvedt says demonstrates how light aircraft can support scientific research.