Andreas Hermansky, a pilot for Temsco Helicopters, spent the first half of last August conducting a series of demanding operations, carefully planned to avoid harsh weather, to assist national park rangers and investigators in the difficult task of locating the wreckage and the five passengers killed in a flightseeing tour in Alaska Denali National Park. His service and professionalism during the multiple missions led to his selection as the Appareo Pilot of the Year Award recipient.
To be presented during the HAI’s Salute to Excellence Awards luncheon March 6, the Pilot of the Year honor recognizes “an outstanding single feat performed by a helicopter pilot during the year or extraordinary professionalism over a period of time.”
The de Havilland Beaver crashed on August 4, 2018, 14 miles southwest of the Denali summit at an elevation of 11,000 feet. A pilot from the airplane called for help, saying some survivors had serious injuries.
Hermansky coordinated a flight for mountaineering rangers in the park’s helicopter but cloud cover obscured the wreckage. Over the next couple of days, rain, snow, cloud cover, and wind, hampered National Park Service (NPS) rescue efforts. However, Hermansky flew several reconnaissance flights to the area, and on August 6, he managed a short-haul mission with an NPS ranger tethered to a rope below the helicopter to access the site. He was able to hover over the scene for just five minutes because weather conditions were deteriorating. But that was long enough for the ranger to view the wreckage and make the grim discovery that there were no survivors.
The badly damaged aircraft was in a precarious location, making safe recovery of both the wreckage and the deceased difficult. By August 10, the weather cleared enough to enable Hermansky to conduct an operation for further wreckage evaluation. HAI described the flight as one of “unprecedented duration and difficulty,” including 40 minutes of hover time and 51 minutes total on scene with a ranger connected from a 200-foot line to safeguard him from the unstable terrain.
He repositioned multiple times for the ranger to find and assess the feasibility of recovering remains and the aircraft. HAI said that Hermansky’s nomination had highlighted his “exceptional flying ability and his ability to work in concert with the ranger team to accomplish critical missions.”
The Austria-born pilot had a law enforcement background when he immigrated to the U.S. in 2000. He became a flight instructor in California before Temsco hired him to fly tours in Alaska. Hermansky took on emergency medical and search-and-rescue roles in the high-altitude Alaska Range in 2010 when he began working with the Denali National Park and Preserve mountaineering staff as the pilot for the park’s AStar B3e helicopter. He regularly flies short-haul and rescue missions up to 20,000 feet, amassing more than 2,600 of his 8,000 flight hours within Denali National Park and completing nearly 300 SAR missions in national parks across Alaska.
