The 56 Report from the highway | Edit ShortsCars

If you're planning another trip or looking for specific advice, let me know:What time of year you plan to goWhich section of the highway you want to explore further I just got back from driving the ALCAN and can confirm that there is a lot of wildlife in western Canada.

#56: Report from the highway I just got back from driving the ALCAN and can confirm that there is a lot of wildlife in western Canada.

This is one lovely caribou among many that we came across. (Caribou like to hang out on the side of the road for some reason.) We did not get out of the car for this picture because caribou = big. Picture taken by my son, Pierce Rosadiuk.

We drove the highway for the first time in years because there were many things that needed to go north from Washington State and many things that needed to go south from Alaska. It was, as anyone who has done it will attest, a bit of a slog. But we saw many animals, including a ton of bears (no decent pics, alas), were delighted again by Kluane Lake and the St. Elias Mountains, and enjoyed the hell out of a very good hotel and excellent used bookstore in Whitehorse. (That town does not disappoint.) Also, in case you are wondering, Tim Hortons has the most consistently clean bathrooms you are going to find. I also highly recommend their Wild Mountain Blueberry muffins.

Canadian bison lined up in a row. We also did not get out of the car for this picture which was taken by me!

I am, of course, working on many things and used the time away from the computer (and social media) to do some much needed planning. (There is plenty of time to think when you are hundreds of miles away from everything.) I have quite a few FOIAs out to the FAA and NTSB on topics related to the 2025 Washington DC midair, Sean Duffy, the New Mexico medevac crash, and ATC upgrades. There are some old FOIAs still lingering that I’m following up on as well, (the oldest is from 2023), and hopefully something is going to happen with them. FOIAs take as long as they take but are pretty much always worth the wait. In the meantime, two other accidents have happened that I am paying close attention to.

Cape Newenham, Alaska

Security Aviation crashed on a second approach attempt into Cape Newenham, Alaska on August 20th. This was a Part 135 charter for the military in a Cessna 441 with a two-pilot crew; all eight people onboard were killed. They were flying IFR. The passengers were engineers all going to do some work at the Cape Newenham Long Range Radar Site.

The preliminary is not out yet but I can tell you that the pilot had an extensive career in Alaska Part 135, going back to the 1980s. He had, I’m sure, upwards of 20,000 if not 30,000 hours of flight time. Experience is not going to be an issue in this accident. I am curious to see what the fuel situation would be after the long flight from Anchorage, the communications with Anchorage Center, and the exact location of the aircraft wreckage in relation to the published missed approach procedure¹.

I’ve seen a lot of media coverage of the weather in the area, which was obviously IMC², but some confusion over what missed approaches are and how they are published and executed. The Preliminary Report will clear up some things for people in aviation but I think because this is an IFR accident in poor weather at a remote site it is going to remain a bit confusing for non-aviation folks to fully grasp.

21 AIR in Miami, Florida

21 AIR flight 7598, with a B-767 under contract for Amazon, crashed in Miami on Sunday, killing five people on the ground. There is video out there of the aircraft coming in fast and landing hard, then losing control and overrunning the runway. The approach was clearly unstable and I am wondering about flight training, the stats on crew experience, who from the company had operational control, and what involvement, if any, that Amazon Air personnel had over operational decision-making. The weather has also been mentioned by the media in relation to this accident and all I can say is that B-767 crews fly under Part 121 and are trained incessantly on missed approach procedures. Familiarity with those procedures or diversion to an alternate airport is always part of flight planning for operations at this level.

There have been documented issues with Amazon’s aviation operations in the past and articles like this one, from 2019, make me wonder how things were going at 21 AIR and how it came to partner with Amazon. There’s a lot to think about and research on this accident.

The Boutique Air Lawsuit

At the end of August the court approved about $220,000 to be paid by Boutique Air in legal fees to me over the lawsuit and appeal. Boutique did not participate in this court hearing nor have they responded to my lawyer’s outreach concerning a settlement on legal fees. Lots of folks have warned me that Boutique will likely refuse to pay, and/or ignore my lawyer and just hope I will go away (along with AIN). I hear you and I get it, but what Boutique plans to do is really not my concern. I can not stress enough how determined I am not to disappear and let this go. I had to pay an ungodly amount of money to defend myself in court and prove I was not a liar or a thief. As a journalist, the only thing I have is my hard work and reputation. So, I will stay with this until the end and I will, one way or another, reach satisfaction from this company.

In the meantime, I will submit more FOIAs, track more stories, work on books, apply for another fellowship to support some ATC reporting, (someday I just know one of these fellowship applications will be approved), follow-up on some ideas about Part 135 and automation in the cockpit and where we are with the reality of flight safety goals, and write about the NTSB vs the FAA which is a battle that shows no signs of slowing down. Expect more on that shortly and to all my subscribers, especially those who are paying, thank you so much for supporting my work!