Willy Fulton, Alaskan Bush Pilot.

I had four fighter pilots on a pack trip in the Teton Wilderness up at Hawks rest on the Yellowstone River and we sitting around the fire and fishing every day and I got so tired of their stories that I left and called A buddy of mine said you got to do my next pack trip and I figured out how I could get in and go to Flight [Music] School so my name is Willie I'm the owner operator of Kodiak Air Service here in Kodiak and so we fly all over the Kodiak archipelago Southwest Alaska taking people fishing hunting looking at Bears anything you need to do with the airplane we always say you bag it we drag it you got to resort to my Mom's memory which is a lot better than mine she says it's 7 years old uh that I told her I was going to move to Alaska and become a bush pilot so it took about a little over 20 years but then I made it when I uh decided to come to Alaska I stopped in uh Washington on the way up and got a float rating and basically got lucky and moved right into a float job soon as I got here with no experience and I knew that all I wanted to fly was a beaver so I actually got my float rating in a beaver and then uh another pilot didn't work out and they said well you think you'd fly that I'm like oh yeah yeah I can fly that that's been flying to Beaver ever since that's the only airplane I care about flying beavers are the ICONic bush plane they do everything we need to do they're built solid I mean it's 72 years old if you think about it's pretty amazing and uh they built them from 47 to 67 built about 1,600 of them a good allseason plane it'll do anything anything well the terrain in Kodak is not unique to Alaska but it's uh it's Coastal with mountains and a you add a lot of wind to that so what happens it gets real turbulent so between the wind and the fog and the rain and the mountains and then the ocean swells there's uh just a lot of judgment involved you know it's one thing to get in but then say you're picking p people up it's another thing to be able to get back out safely so once you're committed you have to make it work and to me that keeps it uh keeps it interesting if you get in somewhere that you can't get out you shouldn't have done that one of the most rewarding Parts is when somebody after a trip say a trip or marijuana in particular he took uh some people out to look at bears and a g was in her 80s and she said you know that was the most amazing day I've had in my whole life life and then it makes you realize what we're doing is pretty important I would tell a kid that wanted to come to Alaska and fly without too much experience to just bring it on man come on up and and do it people ask me uh all the time how much longer are you going to do this because I've been doing it so long and uh I can't IM I don't know what I'd do if I wasn't doing this I would uh wouldn't be very productive I love to fly every day

Channel: Filson

Views: 9,515

Keywords: float plane, bush pilot, willy Fulton, filson life, filson

Id: KNpgFQJZWPg

Length: 3min 38sec (218 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 29 2023