AVIATION

Midwest SAF industry wants to become the world leader in production

Michael Johnson — Mon, 17 Feb 2025 13:30:00 GMT

Sustainable aviation fuel efforts in the upper Midwest are on the move — and there’s no place better prepared in the world than the Midwest to make it work.

That’s according to Jeff Davidman, Delta Air Lines vice president of state and local government affairs. It’s something he believes in so much that he shared the message to thousands of eventgoers between stops at the South Dakota Corn Conference, Minnesota Ag Expo, both in January, and once again at the Northern Corn and Soybean Expo in West Fargo, North Dakota, on Feb. 4. He even made his first appearance at the Minnesota House Agriculture Finance and Policy committee to boost SAF on Feb. 10.

“If you look at a map of the U.S., it really should be led not just in the U.S., but right here in the Midwest, because all the feedstocks that we need to make SAF are right here for soybeans and others,” Davidman said to the crowd of corn and soybean producers and industry members. “We have a strong history, as everybody in this room knows, of producing biofuel.”

Some recent examples of SAF movement in the upper Midwest include:

Delta Air Lines celebrated its first flight using SAF blended with winter camelina on Sept. 25, 2024, at the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport. Gevo received $1.5 billion from the Department of Energy in October 2024 for a SAF facility capable of producing about 65 million gallons of SAF per year. That plant is expected to start in 2026. DG Fuels chose Moorhead in October 2024 as the location of a $5 billion SAF plant capable of producing 193 million gallons of zero- or low-CO2 lifecycle emissions SAF per year. Production is expected to begin in 2030.

These actions are happening, according to Davidman, because there is a growing demand for SAF from the airline industry. The demand is there, he said, yet the industry and technology are just beginning. He says the Midwest has the product and is building an infrastructure that other countries are not comparable to.

SAF can be produced through corn, soybeans, cover crops, forestry residue, municipal solid waste and clean hydrogen. SAF, Davidman believes, can help the aviation industry achieve a goal of net zero carbon emissions by 2050 by replacing conventional jet fuel in aircraft and reducing their carbon footprint. That goal of net zero is shared by The Sustainable Aviation Fuel Grand Challenge, a U.S. government-wide approach to working with industry to reduce cost, enhance sustainability, and expand production to achieve 3 billion gallons per year of domestic sustainable aviation fuel production that achieves a minimum of a 50% reduction in life cycle greenhouse gas emissions compared to conventional fuel by 2030 and 100% of projected aviation jet fuel use, or 35 billion gallons of annual production, by 2050.

The trouble is

While net-zero emissions is great, and a product that works is key, it’s not without immense cost, at least initially, to build the necessary infrastructure. Low supply, high demand and costly startups mean it’s currently two to five times more expensive than conventional gas to produce. When asked about the likelihood of SAF growing without government funding in these early stages, Davidman said it would be very difficult.

When asked about the affect that tax credits have on this progress, Minnesota Bio-Fuels Association executive director Brian Werner told the Minnesota House Agriculture Policy and Finance committee that tax credits are critical right now. Rolling back tax credits would make it more challenging, but not impossible, to grow SAF production.

Currently, the federal government’s Inflation Reduction Act includes tax credits that came through in 2022 to support SAF production. That credit can vary from 35 cents to $1.75 per gallon, according to the Congressional Research Service. Investments in SAF have also increased due to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Renewable Fuel Standard, state programs and tax credits incentivizing use of the fuel.

A current regulatory freeze by the Trump administration is adding a hiccup to the Inflation Reduction Act’s Clean Fuel Production Credit or 45Z tax credit. Because regulatory guidance from the U.S. Treasury came out just days before President Donald Trump returned to office, and because the Trump administration issued an executive order entitled “Regulatory Freeze Pending Review,” this and many other funding sources are on hold pending a 60-day review.

"Treasury will ultimately need to formally issue a proposed rule to implement 45Z, accept and consider public comment, and issue a final rule," according to Dr. Adam Schubert, a senior associate at Stillwater Associates, a transportation fuels consulting firm. "This process could easily take a year. Until that happens, industry will continue in an uncomfortable state of being unable to confidently quantify the tax credit associated with their current fuel production. This uncertainty may force some producers, primarily smaller producers with weaker balance sheets, to shut down or restrict operations."

The Minnesota Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) Tax Credit provides state tax credit to qualifying taxpayers for producing or blending SAF in the state between July 1, 2024, and June 30, 2030. That credit amount equals $1.50 for each gallon of SAF that is both produced in Minnesota or blended with aviation, gasoline, or jet fuel in Minnesota, and sold in Minnesota to a purchaser who certifies that the SAF is for use as fuel in an aircraft departing from an airport in Minnesota.

What that has done is allow production to blossom. In 2022, 25 million gallons of SAF were produced, increasing to 140 million gallons in 2023 and 340 million gallons in 2024, according to Davidman.

But production is still far from Delta’s goal to reach 400 million gallons by 2030 and 35% of their overall use of fuel by 2035. And Delta is one among many in the industry that want to use SAF.

Delta Air Lines alone uses 4 billion gallons of jet fuel annually, with the U.S. airline industry using 30 billion gallons and the world using 50 billion gallons. The U.S. airline industry aims to replace 10% of conventional jet fuel with SAF by 2030, equating to 3 billion gallons.

“So we have a long way to go to get us to where we want to get to,” he said.

While the current blend is 50/50 SAF and conventional jet fuel, Davidman said a Virgin Airlines flight of 100% SAF was successful. He sees the blend rate continuing to increase over time as it becomes more widely used in the industry. When asked about how jet engines respond to the different fuel, he said it makes no difference.

“So what we can do today is we can take 50% sustainable aviation fuel, we can blend it with 50% conventional jet fuel, and that is ASTM certified,” Davidman said. “That is FAA certified. Our planes don't know the difference. Our engines don't know the difference.”

“There is a global race to be first, and I'm excited to say that we at Minnesota today are near the front of the pack,” said Peter Frosch, CEO of Greater MSP, the House ag committee.

Other regions are currently outpacing the Midwest in production of SAF, but that's largely through the use of used cooking oil. Gevo is the global leader of SAF production, producing about 2.5 billion gallons in 2023.

Frosch explained that the Minnesota SAF Hub has helped to develop a strategy for how to create a pathway for more SAF production. The Minnesota SAF Hub is a public, private partnership working towards creating the supply chain needed to create 1 billion gallons of SAF per year in Minnesota.

To continue to push for SAF production in the state, representatives of the Minnesota Corn Growers Association, Minnesota Soybean Growers Association, Delta, Minnesota Farmers Union and Minnesota Bio-Fuels Association spoke about how they can work with the Minnesota legislature to continue to grow the industry. Tax credits are part of that equation.

“Minnesota has plenty of feedstocks ready to go,” she said. “We know that we are going to need everything and anything that’s available to meet the demand.”

Andrea Vaubel, deputy commissioner at the Department of Agriculture, urged the committee to focus on legislation that further boosts the sustainable aviation fuel industry, specifically, continuing the tax credits that can bring new investors to the table and build production efforts.

Vaubel noted that the state supported the tax credit effort at $11.6 million previously and Gov. Tim Walz's proposed budget is calling for further investment.

Davidman said tax credits won't be needed longterm, once the infrastructure and market catches up. He adds that SAF is the best bet right now as electricity will not be powering flights anytime soon.

“We are 75 years away from an electric plane that people would want their families to ride on,” Davidman said.

Jacob Shapiro, a geopolitical speaker, was also one of the session speakers at the Northern Corn and Soybean Expo. He pondered if one of Trump’s moves in Europe would be to get them to invest in U.S. SAF. Europe has the greatest demand for SAF yet they want nothing to do with soybean and corn feedstock, Shapiro said. He suggests that if the U.S. could get Europe to use 15-20% of their feedstock SAF in their blends, it could be a major export opportunity.

But he also spoke about the potential for the U.S. to grow domestic use of its agricultural products at a time when markets are changing around the world. He drew a picture of the rise of South America as the low-cost producer of corn and soybeans in the world, offering other nations a cheaper option over U.S. grains. So if the U.S. continues to lose footing to the growing acreage of Brazil, it may be better to build the domestic market.

“If you are looking for the best potential export market in the future for the United States — let it be the United States,” Shapiro said.

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Restored 1966 Cessna 150 housed at Alexandria Airport is used by the Vikingland Flying Club

Celeste Edenloff — Sun, 05 Jan 2025 19:06:46 GMT

ALEXANDRIA — When Doug Garin, a member of the Experimental Aircraft Association, started looking around for a project the group could work on, he learned of an old plane sitting in an abandoned hangar in Battle Lake.

In an article written by Garin and Paul Clark on the Cessna Owner Organization website in October 2024 – cessnaowner.org/the-dirty-bird – Garin said he heard about the plane from the occasional transient pilot over the years, but wondered if it truly existed.

The reason the group wanted to work on a project is because like a lot of other groups, the members are getting older, Garin said.

“We wanted to kind of throw some enthusiasm in it by having a little project to bring some youth into the EAA,” he said.

One day, he decided to find out if there really was a plane in that abandoned Battle Lake hangar. Garin said he jumped in his Beechcraft Sport and flew to Battle Lake to check it out.

“Sure enough, there it was, sitting in the back of this hangar behind a bunch of weeds. And there were barn swallows flying overhead,” he said, adding there were dozens of barn swallow nests in the open rafters, which meant there was a ton of bird droppings everywhere.

The plane was a 1966 Cessna 150. Garin said it was in pretty bad shape. The tires were deflated and it was covered in bird droppings. In fact, the wings had between 2- and 6-inches of bird droppings on them, according to the article on the Cessna Owner Organization website.

“It’s just a common 150,” said Garin. “But it was something. I thought, ‘Maybe, we should get this thing back going again.’ It just kind of spoke to me.”

Garin said he flew back to Alexandria and got a group together to go pick up the plane. He said there were about eight guys who went back to Battle Lake to get the plane. But before that, he found out who the plane actually belonged to and made contact with the person.

“He wanted a bunch of money for it. I told him it was for a good organization and that the organization wanted to donate it back to the EAA,” said Garin. “He came down to a reasonable price and we put a budget together from there and purchased the plane.”

First things were first when they went back to Battle Lake to get the plane. The wings were removed and the plane was cleaned up, meaning all the bird droppings were washed off.

It was then put up a trailer and hauled back to the Alexandria Airport so the members of the EAA could start their work on restoring it.

The group worked on it for about a year – cleaning it, rebuilding the engine, going through all the controls, repainting it, waxing it and whatever else it took to get it flight ready.

Garin said the guys working on it own planes or fly planes and wanted to know how they work. They got to get their hands on that plane inside and out, tip to tail. He said it was a great educational experience and that the group really had a great time working on the plane, restoring it to its original beauty.

In that process, the Cessna 150 ended up with a nickname – the “Dirty Bird,” which is pretty self explanatory on how the name came to be.

When the plane was finally done and signed off on as airworthy, it was Garin who got to take it for its first flight.

He said he has flown a few planes before that were either new or rebuilt so he remembered what it was like. There is always some nervousness, he said, and that when you get to the end of the runway, you get a little tense.

“You get to the end of the runway and double check, triple check everything and there’s a point where you just have to put the throttle forward and just block everything out,” he said.

Garin said he always has a checklist he goes through and that the last thing he always does is say a prayer – "Angel of God, my guardian dear, to whom God's love commits me here, ever this day be at my side, to light and guard, to rule and guide. Amen."

Some members of the group wanted to have a party or celebration and watch Garin as he took the first flight, but he said he didn’t want any of that.

“If something went wrong, I kind of wanted to be alone,” he said.

But nothing went wrong. Garin said he hadn’t flown a Cessna 150 in about 20 or 30 years and that he was surprised by how light the controls were and how fun it was to fly the little two-passenger light airplane.

Garin said when flying either a new plane or one that has been rebuilt, the experience is almost spiritual.

“When you are up there flying for the first time, you just can’t explain it,” he said. “You’re looking down at God’s creation and it is amazing. I’m up here flying this thing, fighting all this gravity and forces of wind. It’s incredible and a pretty awesome thing.”

After about 45 minutes up in the air, Garin said it was time to come in and that the landing was just fine, which put a big smile on his face. After that, he started taking people up.

And then, a new flying club was organized – the Vikingland Flying Club.

Alexandria Airport Manager Kreg Anderson said because there was another flying club at the airport they didn’t want to compete with, they decided to go a different route. The Vikingland Club is an equity-based club, which means members buy into a membership or buy into a share of the airplane. The 1966 Cessna 150 is now owned by the members of the Vikingland Flying Club.

Members of the club also pay monthly dues and there is also an hourly rate to fly the plane, which is considerably less than if a person were to rent out a plane at a flight school, said Anderson.

“Our goal was to try and keep that hourly cost as low as possible,” he said.

The Vikingland Flying Club is like any other club with a board of directors. For the members, renting the plane is on a first come, first serve basis. Members can take it for an hour or they can take it on a two week vacation to Texas, said Anderson.

“I don’t think we really have too many rules,” he said, adding that they just want the plane to be used.

Garin said the plane definitely is getting used, which makes him and Anderson happy.

Garin also said he wanted to thank all of the people who were involved to get the “Dirty Bird” up and running.

“It was pretty amazing,” he concluded.

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In 2012, an experienced pilot vanished over Minnesota's North Shore. What happened to Michael Bratlie?

Jimmy Lovrien — Mon, 16 Dec 2024 17:00:00 GMT

Editor's note: This archival Vault article was first published Aug. 30, 2022.

TWO HARBORS, Minn. — Michael Bratlie took off from the airport in South St. Paul on June 8, 2012, and flew his two-engine plane up to Lake Superior and along Minnesota's North Shore.

A radar track of the Lakeville, Minnesota, man’s flight shows him following the shore, but the red line indicating his path ends abruptly near the Silver Creek Cliff Tunnel and Encampment Island north of Two Harbors.

There’s been no sign of him — not in the initial, exhaustive search and not in the decade since.

It’s believed Bratlie — then 67 years old, with more than 17,500 flight hours recorded as a bush pilot and a retired Northwest Airlines and U.S. Navy pilot — either crashed his twin-engine Piper PA-31 Navajo into the thick forest or into Lake Superior.

“We couldn’t find any debris. We were looking for oil slicks and debris fields and pieces of plane along the shoreline and all that,” said Carey Johnson, the Lake County sheriff from 2007 until he retired in late June. “And we never were able to come up with stuff that was related to the plane.”

According to the National Transportation Safety Board’s final report, released in January 2016, Bratlie took off just after 2 p.m. from South St. Paul Municipal Airport. He was flying within a half-mile of the Lake Superior shoreline at an altitude of 2,800 feet. As he approached Two Harbors, he descended and eventually reached an altitude of about 1,600 feet at 3:27 p.m. — his last recorded position.

He was reported missing at 10:25 p.m., the report said.

“The airplane reportedly had one of its two engines replaced and the pilot was to fly for about 4 hours to break-in the engine. The airplane did not return from the flight and was reported overdue,” the report said. “The airplane is missing and is presumed to have crashed.”

He did not file a flight plan, the report said. And a News Tribune story during the initial 2012 search said searchers weren’t able to detect the signal from the plane’s emergency beacon transmitter, which automatically sends a distress signal in a crash, meaning it was was not working, the connection to the antenna failed or the plane sunk in the lake, degrading the signal.

Lt. Col. Stan Kegel of the Minnesota Wing of Civil Air Patrol, the U.S. Air Force’s civilian auxiliary, rotated in and out of the role of incident commander during the 13-day search.

He said the Civil Air Patrol initially began its search with the available radar data, which was incomplete. It sent them into Wisconsin east of the Twin Cities. But after a day or so, improved radar data and data from Bratlie’s cellphone pointed them to the North Shore, specifically the area between Two Harbors and Silver Bay.

Ultimately, the Civil Air Patrol logged more than 600 personnel days and 600 air hours searching Lake and Cook counties and parts of St. Louis County by air.

“It’s a very heavily forested area, rugged terrain for sure. Obviously, Lake Superior was in consideration,” Kegel said. “It’s a difficult search when you’re looking down at basically solid forest. You’re looking for something that looks out of place. You’re looking for something that doesn’t look natural, something that looks disturbed.”

If they saw something noteworthy, they’d send a ground crew to check it out. Many other agencies also participated in the search.

Six weeks after her husband disappeared, Diana Bratlie wrote to the Duluth News Tribune, urging people recreating in the area to keep an eye open for signs of her husband. She made a similar plea in a May 2013 letter in the Lake County News-Chronicle, urging readers to report anything unusual to police.

Phone numbers and an email address believed to belong to Diana were no longer in service and a Facebook message from the News Tribune was not returned last week.

“Our family continues to hope he is somewhere in the remote area around Two Harbors or Silver Bay. We miss him terribly,” she wrote in the News Tribune in 2012. “With that in mind, I would like to ask anyone who is hiking, ATVing, fishing or just enjoying the beautiful north woods to be aware that Mike is still missing and to please keep an eye out for any sign of him or the plane.”

“That’s what we’ve always kind of thought. Are we going to someday have a hunter that stumbles upon wreckage?” Johnson said. “That has yet to happen.”

It wouldn’t be unprecedented.

In November 1990, a deer hunter found the remains of a float plane and its four occupants that had crashed nine years earlier in a spruce swamp 10 miles north of Island Lake.

And in September 1994, two hunters found a helicopter that had crashed the March before in forest and swamp land near Wisconsin Rapids, in central Wisconsin.

But Lake Superior poses a whole different challenge.

On Sept. 24, 1969, an Air Force jet trainer crashed in Lake Superior near Duluth during training operations. The plane and its pilot were never found.

Even after scanning areas of the lake with sonar and sending an underwater remote control camera into its depths, there was no sign of Bratlie or his plane. Johnson said he believes that’s where the plane could be.

Johnson believes because Bratlie was an experienced pilot, he would have been able to gently put his plane down in the water in the event of losing one or both of his engines. It was a maintenance flight to test a new engine, after all. A soft landing like that would have kept the plane intact, leading to no debris field.

“I am thinking it is more possible that it did go down in Lake Superior because of the day and the weather and all the rest of that,” Johnson said. “But just nobody one saw it — you didn’t hear it, you didn’t see it.”

In the years since, the Lake County Sheriff’s Office has occasionally received tips. A woman spotted something shiny on a cliff, but it turned out to be ice. And a sheriff’s deputy was fishing near Encampment Island and saw three distinct lines of bubbles coming up from the depths of the lake. He marked the location so it could be investigated, but a search of the area was fruitless.

The Civil Air Patrol would return again, too. In October 2012, it moved a planned training to the North Shore so it could both train and search for Bratlie when trees were bare, but it didn’t turn up anything.

“We pour a lot of ourselves into this and, obviously, it's our great hope that we find someone alive and rescue them, or in the absence of that, we hope to at least provide some closure and help resolve the situation,” Kegel said. “And so it's deeply disappointing when that's not the way it turns out.”

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Minnesota pilot’s legacy lives on 25 years after fatal test flight

Peter Passi — Tue, 09 Jul 2024 11:31:00 GMT

DULUTH — Laurie Anderson said she will remember her late husband as “forever 33.”

That was pilot Scott D. Anderson’s age when he died, following the crash landing of Cirrus Aircraft’s first production airplane during a test flight on March 23, 1999.

While the tragic incident occurred 25 years ago, Laurie Anderson said it almost feels like yesterday. That’s how easily she can transport her thoughts to the date of his loss, at a time when she was just three months pregnant with their only child — later named Scott “Evan” Anderson in honor of a father he would never meet.

Gary Black, who worked alongside Anderson as a test pilot, had flown the same plane that morning before heading to Chicago to pick up Cirrus co-founder Alan Klapmeier in a twin-engine aircraft. Only after arriving in the Windy City did he learn that 115-Charlie Delta had crashed and Scott was in the hospital.

“We flew back, but of course we lost Scott that evening,” he said.

Fatal test flight

Black recalled that Anderson and some members of Cirrus’ engineering team had decided to remove some components to allow more range of motion in testing. “And that’s the flight that we lost Scott on.”

He explained that Anderson, whose call sign was “Ando,” had concerns about the aircraft and thoughts about how the controls might be refined.

“He felt that there was some possible floating in the ailerons. So, they removed the aileron stops, and the rudder/aileron interconnect,” Black said.

Black had been asked to perform accelerated stalls that morning but decided against it, given gusty conditions that could have made such maneuvers potentially hazardous.

As for Anderson’s flight, Black said he did not know if his colleague had been trying to execute the same type of requested testing he postponed earlier.

Black explained that the wing of the airplane was made of composite materials, which were stiffer than the aluminum flight controls.

An investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board found that the ailerons, which are flaps on the trailing edge of the wing used to bank the plane in flight, had jammed.

Black said this put Anderson in serious trouble and left him trying as best he could to muscle the plane straight, using his legs under the rudder pedal and his body weight to maintain control.

“He could no longer move the ailerons. So, it was deflected in a full rolling movement, and he was able to stretch the cables with super-human force to maintain some flight control but not enough that he was able to safely land,” Black said.

Anderson’s plane crash-landed on unoccupied prison property just south of Duluth International Airport. While he survived the initial impact, Anderson died a short while later in the hospital.

Cirrus was just 10 days away from having its parachute system incorporated into the aircraft, and Black said that safety feature, had it been available, likely would have led to Anderson’s survival.

Today, all Cirrus aircraft come standard-equipped with the parachute system.

Additional control refinements also were made in the wake of Anderson’s fatal crash.

Development of parachute system

Anderson was the first pilot to test Cirrus’ ballistic parachute, which can be deployed to safely lower an entire aircraft to the ground under the canopy in case of a mid-air emergency.

With crumple features incorporated into the plane’s design, its occupants are likely to survive a parachute descent, but the aircraft may never again be airworthy.

Black recalls the 18 months he and Anderson spent testing the Cirrus Airplane Parachute System — called CAPS for short — and convincing regulators at the Federal Aviation Administration that it should be certified for mass production.

With just one test plane in Cirrus’ arsenal, Anderson and Black could ill afford to lose it in testing the parachute. Instead, they had to deploy the chute, allowing it to fully expand before cutting it loose in mid-air to resume flight, so they could have another go.

In all, they conducted eight successful in-flight tests of CAPS over the desert of Southern California, flying out of Thermal Airport, now the Jacqueline Cochran Airport, west of the Salton Sea.

Black said the FAA hadn’t previously certified such a system, and Cirrus staff had to write up a testing protocol to satisfy regulators’ safety standards. Then they needed to perform those tests in the field, under federal observation.

Looking back, Black said: “We didn’t fully realize how hard it would be.”

‘Calm under pressure’

Laurie Anderson said she accompanied the Cirrus team to the Mojave Desert, where she described her role as that of “a ground rat,” helping to recover parachutes, among other tasks.

“He would climb and then cut the engine and try to put it into a spin and then recover. It was very scary,” she recalled.

But Anderson had great faith in her husband’s abilities as an aviator.

“Honestly, I never thought he would die in a plane crash, and he didn’t either,” she said. “He was really one with the airplane. It was so instinctive for him. He was very calm and measured.”

In a video interview, Paul Johnston, a chief engineer for Cirrus at the time of the testing, said: “If you want to know somebody who was calm under pressure, there is nobody that topped Scott Anderson.”

Laurie was already serving with the 148th Air National Guard when Scott joined the unit, and that was where they first met.

Anderson had just graduated from Stanford University with degrees in mechanical engineering and history. He enlisted in hopes of becoming a fighter pilot and quickly achieved that dream, rising to the rank of major before his death.

“If you could sum it up, he just lived life fully and largely. I don’t think I’ve ever met anybody else quite like that,” Laurie said.

Laurie Anderson said her husband took pride in excelling at what he did, but also wanted others to achieve the same sort of success. “He was really inspiring.”

Mentor and friend

Col. Curt Grayson referred to Anderson as “a mentor of mine who helped me get to where I am today.”

Grayson said he was fresh out of high school and working as a maintenance crew chief at the 148th in the mid-1990s when he first met Anderson, a rising F-16 pilot.

In 1996, while still active in the Guard, Anderson was hired at Cirrus, where he served as director of flight operations and chief test pilot.

After Grayson graduated from college, Anderson helped him land a job at Cirrus, too, where they got to know each other more closely. Anderson encouraged Grayson to successfully pursue a slot as a fighter pilot with the 148th in 1998.

While Grayson was away in training in Texas, he learned of his friend and mentor’s death. Unfortunately, they never had the opportunity to fly together in a military capacity.

Laurie Anderson said her husband was excited and sincerely motivated to help bring an innovative new aircraft to market.

“He was an idea person, and he loved the idea of realizing a possibility,” she said.

Black estimated that around 200 people were employed at Cirrus at the time of Anderson’s death and said news of his death hit staff with brutal force.

“Every single person knew Scott personally, and it was a huge, huge blow to Cirrus,” Black said. “We wondered: Would the company even keep moving on? But Scott would have wanted it to. And that’s part of why we’re so dedicated to carrying on his legacy.”

Today, Cirrus is the largest manufacturer in Duluth and the No. 1 producer of single-engine general aviation airplanes in the world.

Lasting legacy

Black noted that Anderson’s efforts have helped save many lives since his death.

The parachute system has now been used 129 times, and is responsible for returning more than 200 people safely to their families, to date.

“That was ... an engineering marvel at the time, with ballistics and parachutes on an airplane of that size,” Grayson recalled. “It was the persistence of Scott and the Cirrus engineers that made it happen.”

Anderson’s contributions were recognized with his 2010 induction into the Minnesota Aviation Hall of Fame.

To further honor and remember Anderson, friends and family created a youth program called the Scott Anderson Leadership Forum, inviting about 120 students each summer to participate in five days of activities intended to cultivate a future generation of leaders.

The forum has been operating for more than 20 years, with the College of St. Scholastica hosting it for the past seven seasons.

Scott Olesewski, the college’s outdoor pursuit coordinator, helps orchestrate the event and said, “We want to push these kids out of their comfort zone,” explaining that’s when growth tends to occur.

Olesewski said Anderson’s parents and former colleagues, including Black, participated in the event.

“We really talk about Scott and how he lived his life,” he said, pointing to the pilot’s willingness to step into new challenges and become a better person who can serve others, even when it might require self-sacrifices.

The tale of Anderson’s life story involves many facets, including being a standout athlete and captain of the Duluth East football team; a canoe trip from Duluth to Hudson Bay at the age of 22; authoring books on that outdoor adventure as well as a work of fiction based on his training as a fighter pilot; playing saxophone with local jazz groups; and inspiring others.

Grayson points to his former friend as an excellent role model.

“Ando was very competitive, but he also was competitive in trying to make things better for everyone he met,” he said. “That was one of the things that was so great about him.”

The leadership course also addresses the need to strike a balance.

Laurie Anderson said sometimes people assume her husband must have been a big risk-taker to work as a test pilot.

“But really the exact opposite is true. He was very calculating. All of his decisions were really measured and well thought through,” she said.

In the account of his journey to Hudson Bay, a book called “Distant Fires,” Scott Anderson wrote: “Life is the pursuit, not the destination.”

And Laurie Anderson said that’s the way her husband approached all manner of challenges.

“He wasn’t crabby about trying to get something done. He was like, ‘This is cool. This is fun,’ whatever it was,” she said. “And he was fun to be around.”

Paul Anderson, Scott’s father, said the outpouring of support after Ando’s death opened his eyes to the true impact his son had in the community.

“Since the accident, we’ve just learned so much about Scott and the influence he had on this community,” he said. “Of course, it remains a really hurtful chapter of our life. But we still appreciate hearing from people who comment today about knowing Scott and the positive things that he did.”

Laurie Anderson, who has since remarried, agreed the loss still stings, despite her feelings of gratitude for her former husband.

Their son may be the greatest gift left behind that she continues to hold close.

“Whatever happened, I have Evan, who looks like him, sounds like him and walks like him. He’ll even say things sometimes that surprise me, because it sounds like his dad and makes you think about that nature/nurture conversation. It makes me believe that nature really is pretty powerful. I love being surprised by that sometimes.”

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Game wardens in the sky: Here's what DNR pilots do

John Myers — Fri, 15 Dec 2023 13:00:00 GMT

GRAND RAPIDS — Chris Lofstuen retired from his dream job as a Minnesota Department of Natural Resources pilot last week.

Lofstuen, of Duluth Township, had been the DNR’s chief pilot since 2019. He didn’t want to leave his passion for being a flying game warden in the rearview mirror. But he says he feels pretty good about the fact the job is now in the hands of a good cop, a good pilot and a good friend.

Duluth native Jake Willis has taken over as the chief DNR pilot, heading the agency’s aviation unit based out of Grand Rapids. Willis, 43, and Lofstuen, 57, have been buddies for years.

Willis, an avid outdoorsman, is a Duluth native and Superior High �� graduate who went from being a Duluth city (and previously University of Minnesota Duluth) cop to game warden, trading his urban beat for a backwoods patrol. Before accepting the chief pilot job, Willis had patrolled the woods and waters of the Brookston station just outside Duluth since 2018.

On the ground, as a fully licensed police officer — as all state conservation officers are — Willis may respond to a drunken driver call one hour, illegal spruce tree cutting the next and then reports of a dead bear struck by a car, all between his contacts with hunters and anglers.

But now he’s also going to be in charge of the DNR’s aviation unit, carrying on a tradition that started in 1947.

“It’s become a pretty important part of what (DNR) is trying to accomplish,” Lofstuen said of the aviation unit. “Not just natural resource protection and management, but public safety in some pretty remote places.”

A broad mission in the air

Aviation unit pilots over the years have conducted a huge variety of missions — everything from keeping an eye on hunters and anglers, searching for and rescuing lost or injured people, and even ferrying out dead bodies from hard-to-reach locations.

Those historic missions continue today with added duties of stocking fish in remote lakes, monitoring wildfires, conducting aerial surveys for wildlife research — waterfowl, elk, moose, deer, wolves and more. They also conduct surveys of how many anglers — boats in summer, ice houses in winter — are fishing on a given lake on a given day, part of the DNR’s creel survey efforts to determine how much fishing pressure is happening on any given body of water.

“The majority of our time in the air really isn’t for law enforcement. It’s primarily a lot of research work with some public safety mixed in,” Lofstuen noted.

But even while working on aerial surveys for wildlife research, DNR warden pilots can help make a bust. From the air, the DNR pilots are able to see things that officers on the ground can’t — like a backhoe illegally altering a stream a mile from the nearest road or a deer hunter with a pile of illegal bait on a big chunk of private property.

Willis recalls one case early in his DNR career when he was flying with an aviation unit pilot on another mission when they noticed a pile of bright orange pumpkins piled along a field, not far from a deer stand.

“Corn and pumpkins show up like a beacon from the air,” Willis noted. “We marked it with a GPS pin and finished what we were doing that day. … And on opening morning (of deer hunting season), I walked in there, much to the guy’s surprise. He couldn’t figure out how I knew the bait was there because I hadn’t even walked over to it yet.”

Some hunters intent on breaking the law will go to great lengths to hide their illicit acts. Some DNR pilots have reported camouflage netting strung over bait piles. Willis and Lofstuen noted that some hunters have even painted white PVC pipe to look like a birch tree, and then filled it with corn so only a small amount comes out the bottom — like an automatic pet or livestock feeder. At night, thieves stealing spruce tops or birch trees off public or private land tend to work in the dark.

But DNR pilots generally fly low and slow enough to see whatever doesn’t look quite right on the ground.

“If something is happening way back on a piece of private property, they can see that from the air. I could legally walk in there. We have that right. But I’m probably not going to go in unless I’m sure there is something going on,” Willis noted. “When we see it from the air, we know for sure.”

Duluth-area Conservation Officer Kipp Duncan said DNR pilots often see things while conducting fish or wildlife surveys that they pass on to wardens on the ground, one cop’s tip to another, that often help in making a case. In other cases, the cooperation is more direct.

“In one shining case (using a floodlight or vehicle light to shine deer to shoot at night) I had, they directed me right to the guy who still had the light on and a loaded gun in his hands,” Duncan noted.

From Duluth cops to DNR

Lofstuen, who started in law enforcement with the West St. Paul Police Department, moved north to be closer to the outdoor activities he loved. He said he loved his previous job as a sex crimes investigator for the Duluth Police Department and was reluctant to leave. But the chance to combine three of his passions with the DNR job — flying, the outdoors and law enforcement — was too good to turn down.

Both Lofstuen and Willis have been pilots since they were 18.

Willis received his degree in law enforcement and aviation from Minnesota State University-Mankato. His goal had been to become a commercial airline pilot. But the cost and time it took to train for that job seemed out of reach. Instead, Willis became a cop, first for the University of Minnesota Duluth and then the Duluth Police Department. He slowly left his passion for flying behind. That is until Lofstuen coaxed him into a ride out of the Two Harbors airport on Lofstuen’s private plane.

The love of flying “immediately came right back to me when I went up with Chris. I went right out and got current (with his private pilot's license requirements) after that,” Willis said. “I missed it that much and didn't know it.”

Lofstuen had dreamed of a career as a corporate pilot flying bigwigs around in Gulfstream jets. That never happened, and instead, the Bloomington, Minnesota, native ended up as a police officer. But he never stopped flying.

“Before I wanted to be a cop, I wanted to be a pilot. This job let me do both,” Lofstuen said of his DNR gig. “Once you get into public service like this, it’s a big part of who you are.”

In recent years, Willis has been flying part time for DNR in addition to his field station work on the ground. When Lofstuen was forced to retire due to a medical issue that ended his piloting days — after 32 years in law enforcement, including 10 years as a flying warden with DNR — Willis was encouraged to apply for the job.

“I probably won’t be flying any more than I was before because a big part of the chief pilot job is administrative,” said Willis, who did get a nice bump to the rank of captain.

Aviation unit started with WWII vets

Two of the aviation unit’s first pilots, Robert Hodge and John Parker, were recently inducted into the Minnesota Aviation Hall. Both men flew in the military during World War II and, in 1947, joined what then was the Minnesota Department of Conservation, Hodge in the Ely area and Parker at Warroad. The unit started with two planes and not much direction.

“Before the era of GPS, we often didn’t know where these guys were or what they were doing,” Lofstuen noted.

There currently are five pilots — including Willis — in the unit who are also licensed conservation officers and two others who are “natural resource” pilots who are not officers. Combined, they may fly over 2,000 hours for the DNR in a year.

Lofstuen said it’s important that as many DNR pilots as possible are licensed officers who are trained in police work.

“It’s essentially a flying police officer. And we see things other people might miss that might be important in the investigation,” Lofstuen noted.

The DNR aircraft — planes and helicopters — and their pilots are stationed in Bemidji, Brainerd, Grand Rapids and Mankato but end up flying over all areas of the state.

Those aircraft can take off and land not just from any airport in the state, but some are fitted with floats for summer lake work and then skis for winter. Willis has spent much of his time in a two-seat American Champion Scout, a tiny plane that is perfect for low-level reconnaissance. Another workhorse of the DNR fleet is the Cessna 185, including one stationed in Grand Rapids that has floats and wheels.

The aviation unit covers the entire state, especially for fish and wildlife missions like elk surveys in the far northwestern corner of the state and moose surveys in the far northeast. But the focus often is on state-managed lands, including 75 state parks, 1,300 miles of trails, 3,000 public access lakes and rivers and some 5 million acres of state forest.

"We try to prioritize what is pretty expensive flight time," Lofstuen said. "Are we going to land that float plane on a lake to check one angler for a fishing license? That's probably not the best use of taxpayers' money when someone can do it from a boat. So we focus on the higher value things we can do."

The DNR pilots spend most of their time flying low and slow, which requires constant attention to flying as well as whatever they are monitoring on the ground. A special waiver from the Federal Aviation Administration allows them to fly as low as 100 feet. They don’t often fly much at night or in bad weather, but all of the DNR pilots must be instrument-rated to fly in all kinds of Minnesota conditions.

It has sometimes been dangerous work. In June 1999, Grant Coyour of Bemidji — a veteran DNR conservation officer and pilot — and a student biologist were killed when their 1977 Piper Cub airplane crashed into a bog during a moose survey in the Red Lake Wildlife Management Area south of Baudette.

Next year, the aviation unit will take delivery of a new Cessna 206, a turbocharged single-engine aircraft that will be fitted with the latest in infrared and night vision sensing and photography technology aimed at helping in wildlife surveys. In other states, the same technology has been used to survey wildlife as small as grouse and as large as elk, Lofstuen noted.

The technology can also be used to map wildfires at night, showing the size and footprint of the fire and locating where any hotspots may be.

There’s even a laser option that can be used to direct wardens on the ground to a specific location.

“In some sense, we’re using the same technology we were back in 1947… a pair of binoculars and a pilot looking out the window,” Lofstuen said, noting that conducting elk surveys, for example, requires the pilot to fly not much higher than tree-top altitude. The new technology will be safer and more accurate, he noted. “This is going to bring us into the modern era and really expand what we can do from the air.”

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A Minnesota UFO? The 1897 Barnesville mystery 'air ship'

Tracy Briggs — Wed, 25 Oct 2023 16:39:00 GMT

FARGO — In my last couple few years of doing “Back Then” stories, perhaps no story has garnered more attention than this story from December of 2020 when we looked into one of the region's most famous UFO sightings high above the skies of a North Dakota football stadium on a chilly October night in 1948.

It was shared and reshared many times. I even had the chance to talk about it on a UFO podcast out of Spain. That was a first.

The story was probably intriguing for a couple of reasons. First, the person who reported the unidentified flying object in north Fargo on Oct. 1, 1948, was a well-respected World War II aviator. His account was deemed so credible that government officials came out to talk to him about in person.

Another reason this story might have attracted attention? If you look at the time and location of the sighting it’s very clear that the alleged UFO would have been tearing through the skies just as a college football game between the North Dakota State University Bison and the Augustana Vikings of 1948 was carrying on below.

I tried my hardest to find anyone who might have played in or attended the game that night, but I wasn’t successful. The youngest players on the team that night would be about 93 years old. Would they remember anything weird going on in the sky above the scrimmage line? Or perhaps any children in the stands that day might still be around today to tell their story. If so, let me know.

Anyway, the story was so interesting and I loved doing every second of it. That’s one reason I was so glad to hear that Markus Krueger of the Clay County Historical Society is doing a presentation at the Moorhead Library that features this sighting, what led up to it and more.

"In the summer of 1947, hundreds of people started seeing what they call 'Flying Saucers,'" Krueger said. "Nobody had ever seen one before, but once somebody came up with the concept of the Flying Saucer, everybody started seeing them."

He's taking a light-hearted look at how pop culture might have influenced what we thought we saw in the skies and even what we called it. For example, while the people in the 1940s called those specks in the sky "flying saucers," more than 50 years earlier in Barnesville, Minnesota, people spotted mysterious "airships." And those accounts are even wilder than what happened in north Fargo a half-century later.

Mysterious airships hover over Barnesville

In the late summer of 1896, North America was captivated by the “last great gold rush” when prospectors discovered gold in the Klondike region of Canada’s Yukon territory. But millions of Americans were less intrigued by what was in “them thar hills” than what was flying above their heads.

From late 1896 to early 1897, from the western United States to the east, America was enthralled by “mystery airships.” A precursor to what became known as unidentified flying objects (UFOS) or today’s preferred term of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), mystery airships were described in many different ways. Some people saw them as strange lights in the sky while others said they looked like huge cigarlike dirigibles, birds or strange machines.

The first reports of mystery airships came out of California in November of 1896. In addition to seeing the ship itself, some people on the ground said they spotted occupants riding in the ships. Others said they actually interacted with the occupants, and while they appeared human, there was something “off” about them.

By the spring of 1897, the wave of sightings had spread to the central and eastern United States. Krueger says the airships were spotted in Nebraska by February of 1897, Kansas in March and Minnesota by April.

According to Robert Barthomew in his 1990 book, “The Airship Hysteria of 1896-1897,” the number of total sightings was in the thousands and the total number of witnesses might have exceeded 100,000.

“The more people who said they saw an airship, the more people across the country could swear that they saw airships, too,” said Krueger.

An airship was spotted in Barnesville, Minnesota, on April 14, 1897. Kruger shared two clips from the Barnesville Record-Review from April 15th and 16th.

The first paragraph of the story from the 15th starts:

“The airship that has been frightening the people of the Twin Cities for the past week, passed over this place last evening between 8 and 9 o’clock and was visible for nearly thirty minutes and all sorts of ugly rumors are afloat this morning.”

The story continues by claiming some people were confident they saw the faces of Minnesota state legislators gazing down upon them from the ship.

The story gets even more outrageous the next day claiming that the cigar-shaped object carried Martians who came to Barnesville to get a good deal on ladies' skirts at a local store.

“By far the largest and handsomest assortment ever shown in the city at prices that are within the reach of all, a beauty at $1.75.”
Tongue in cheek

It’s pretty clear, by this point, the journalists and the people supposedly spotting the airships were having a little fun with all of this. Some reporters even tagged out of their story claiming they were writing their account from “an insane asylum.”

But the question remains were any of the airships based in reality? You never know. If UFOs visited Earth in the 20th century, why couldn’t they have visited in the 19th century?

In his book “Borderlands; The Ultimate Exploration of the Unknown," historian Mike Dash described and summarized the 1896–1897 series of airship sightings, writing:

“The general conclusion of investigators was that a considerable number of the simpler sightings were misidentification of planets and stars, and a large number of the more complex the result of hoaxes and practical jokes. A small residuum remains perplexing.”

If you’re perplexed and want to know more, check out Markus Krueger’s presentation Thursday, Oct. 26, at the Moorhead Library. Let me know if you discover the truth about the ships and why they might have come to Barnesville.

My money is on the ladies' dress sale

IF YOU GO:

What: A History of UFO Sightings in Fargo-Moorhead

When: 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 26

Where: Moorhead Public Library, 118 5th Street South

Cost: Free

Ages: All

Details: In 1897 and 1947, locals spotted unidentified flying objects in our skies. Was it aliesn? Mad scientists? Military secrets? Pop culture mass hysteria?

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Body of missing pilot recovered from Lake Superior

Staff reports — Thu, 24 Aug 2023 20:17:01 GMT

HOVLAND, Minn. — The body of a missing pilot was recovered from Lake Superior on Thursday, Aug. 24, six days after he was last seen flying his ultralight aircraft near Hovland.

The body of Denny Pechacek, of Hovland, was discovered after a helmet confirmed to be his washed up on the beach near 3568 E. Minnesota Highway 61 early Thursday morning, according to a news release from Cook County. Crews, which had been searching the Hovland area for days, then focused their efforts on the beach and that area of the lake.

A side scan sonar unit located Pechacek's body after three hours. The body was recovered and the family was notified, the county said.

“This is not the outcome that we wanted, and our thoughts and prayers go to Denny’s family and friends. We are so very fortunate that we live in a community where people will drop what they’re doing and rally to assist those in need,” Sheriff Pat Eliasen said in the news release.

Pechacek took off near Hovland on Friday, Aug. 18, and was reported missing when he didn’t return.

Photos on social media show Pechacek flew a powered parachute, or paraplane, which consists of a lightweight and wheeled seat and engine strung below a parachute-like wing.

Numerous state, local and federal agencies helped with the search, as did many volunteer civilians, the county said.

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Clara City pilot dies of injuries from crop-dusting crash

Staff reports — Thu, 03 Aug 2023 16:00:28 GMT

CLARA CITY, Minn. — A Clara City man has died as a result of injuries he suffered in a crash while piloting a crop-dusting plane in Chippewa County.

The family of Derek John DuHoux reported that he died Wednesday, Aug. 2, while in medical care for the injuries he suffered the morning of July 25.

“Derek went doing what he loves — flying! Godspeed son, fly high with the angels,” the family posted on a CaringBridge site created to share medical updates about him.

The Chippewa County Sheriff’s Office reported that the plane DuHoux was flying caught a power line and crashed into a cornfield in Crate Township around 9:35 a.m. July 25. He was transported by LifeLink Aircare with life-threatening injuries after emergency responders reached the site, according to the news release from the sheriff at the time. The medical facility was not named.

The Clara City native and MACCRAY High �� graduate was a military veteran and a 2011 graduate of the aircraft and pilot bachelor’s program at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, according to West Central Tribune archives and a LinkedIn page.

His service in the military included service as Alpha Company commander with the 1-10 Attack Reconnaissance Battalion in the U.S. Army.

A West Central Tribune photo from 2007 shows he missed his senior prom while attending military training in Georgia.

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AirCorps Aviation celebrates the restoration of 2 World War II-era planes

Maggi Fellerman — Tue, 25 Jul 2023 18:37:12 GMT

BEMIDJI — AirCorps Aviation opened its hangar at the Bemidji Regional Airport last Friday, July 21, for the public to witness two completed planes — A P-51C Thunderbird and P-47 Thunderbolt.

According to AirCorps Aviation Fabrication and Sales Specialist Stefan Hokuf, Friday’s open house was held to celebrate the end of an era, but also the start of a new one.

“We’re here to celebrate the finish and completion of these two World War II aircraft as we prepare them to travel over to Airventure in Oshkosh, Wisconsin,” Hokuf said. “Our company has been working on restoring these aircraft for the last several or many years. We are really proud to be able to show the community what we’ve accomplished.”

A whole slew of different teams worked together to restore these historic planes, including Computer-Aided Design teams, fabrication teams, assembly teams and the mechanics that make it run — but everyone's goal is the same.

“It's really about the legacy of World War II and honoring the Americans that not only flew these airplanes in combat, but the massive amount of Americans who put the airplanes together,” Hokuf said. “We just want to tell that story and honor our veterans.”

During Friday’s event, community members were invited to learn about their history, grab a bite to eat from a food truck and spark up conversations with other plane and history enthusiasts. Attendees even got to witness the planes take flight.

Next, the two planes will fly over to Wisconsin to be entered in an Airventure event, where planes of all kinds gather from all over the world and competitions are held for restoration efforts.

Hokuf said specifically WWII aircraft will be competing with one another. A team of judges looks at the authenticity and replication of the aircraft to determine which one wins.

“Our goal is to show what we can do and ultimately try to win in our work and we're really proud of what we do, especially when we finish an aircraft,” Hokuf said. “We have a lot of local people who work here so it's really fun for this opportunity to put the aircraft on display and share it with the larger community.”

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2 men killed in plane crash north of Duluth

Staff reports — Wed, 21 Jun 2023 19:24:29 GMT

DULUTH — Two people were killed when a small vintage plane crashed in the Pequaywan Lake area north of Duluth on Wednesday morning, authorities confirmed.

The two-seat 1946 Aeronca Champion went down near the 8300 block of Pequaywan Lake Road, according to the St. Louis County Sheriff's Office. The occupants were Bryan Handyside, 60, who lived near the crash site, and Matthew Joseph, 64, who lived in Duluth's Woodland neighborhood. Handyside, authorities said, was piloting the plane and had over 30 years of aviation experience.

Both men were employed by Duluth-based Cirrus Aircraft, but were on a non-company flight, according to law enforcement and a company representative on scene. The plane is privately owned.

The U.S. Air Force's Rescue Coordination Center detected a distress signal from the plane around 7:15 a.m., according to Sheriff's Office staff. The Sheriff's Office was called to the downed plane at 8:12 a.m. More than a dozen first responders raced to the scene, with a spotter plane first locating the wreckage in a wooded area just west of the road.

There was no immediate word on the cause of the crash.

"It is believed the aircraft recently completed an annual inspection and was on a 'return to service' flight," Sgt. Eric Sathers reported in a news release.

Abernethy said the plane took off from Duluth International Airport at approximately 7 a.m. A neighbor along Pequaywan Lake Road reported hearing a banging noise that may have been the result of the plane clipping some trees on the way down.

A team from the Federal Aviation Administration was on site Wednesday, and the medical examiner's office arrived to remove the bodies. Authorities said National Transportation Safety Board investigators were expected to visit the crash site Thursday.

Up to 20 members of the Sheriff's Office, St. Louis County Rescue Squad and Pequayan Township Fire Department were on scene.

Handyside was involved in a 2011 crash on Island Lake when his yellow two-seater Piper bush plane clipped some shrubbery during a landing. No one was injured in that incident.

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