on the cover / By Judy Hodgson and Hank Sims

On the Covers

It wasn’t the first time, the soft-spoken Alejandro told the Journal in Spanish on a recent weekend afternoon, that Sun Valley had told him to stay away from work because of his fraudulent identification papers. Two years ago approximately 300 undocumented Sun Valley employees were warned by the company to stay home because la Migra was coming the next day, he said. They were also told to get new social security cards. After immigration had come and gone, the employees returned to the farm. Within 15 days, Alejandro was the proud owner of a new social security number.

“The Plane that Wasn’t There,” by Ryan Burns. Dec. 17, 2009.

A horrific late-night plane crash at sea, just miles away from the Eureka-Arcata airport, was made so much worse by the response of the county’s airport manager. Ryan Burns, who covered the crash when it happened, followed the case right through to the conclusions reached by the National Transportation Safety Board in their investigation of the crash. It turned out that faulty communication between local airport staff and air traffic control personnel meant that a rescue effort, which could conceivably have saved the lives of the pilot and his passenger, was never launched.

At just below 4,000 feet, Milushev, following the controller’s instructions, switched his radio over to the local common traffic advisory frequency, where approaching pilots communicate with one another. (The local airport has no control tower of its own.) The Seattle controller, now unable to reach Milushev, then watched with concern as over the next 15 minutes the plane dropped lower and lower, sinking well below the minimum crossing altitude for a runway approach. Multiple times, the controller tried to reestablish radio contact, to no avail. He called Air Traffic Control in Oakland and asked them to try Milushev on the radio — also unsuccessful. Finally, he summoned his supervisor, and together they watched as three radar sweeps showed the airplane moving south-southeast toward the jagged coast, less than a mile from Trinidad Head and a mere 100 feet above the surface of the sea. The airport runway lies at 221 feet.

And then the plane disappeared.

What happened next remains unclear despite investigations by the Coast Guard, the Humboldt County Department of Public Works and the National Transportation Safety Board, not to mention scrutiny by the friends and families of both Milushev and Gustafson. What’s known is that shortly after the plane disappeared, Humboldt County Airports Manager Jacqueline Hulsey told the Seattle Center supervisor that the plane had landed safely at the Arcata-Eureka Airport when, in fact, it had crashed into the ocean six-and-a-half miles away. This erroneous report, along with an unexplained delay the following morning, postponed search and rescue efforts by more than 12 hours. The families of Milushev and Gustafson believe that lapse could have meant the difference between life and death.

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