Three Santa Clara County residents were among four people killed when a small plane crashed into the water near the remote coastal town of Seldovia, Alaska last Wednesday. Ronald Schmidt, 65, of San Jose; Lance Schmidt, 20, also of San Jose; and Daniel Simons, 82, of Los Gatos all died in the crash, along with the pilot, who was based in Anchorage.
According to NBC Bay Area, all four people aboard the aircraft were killed when it went down in the water near the small coastal community. The single-engine Piper PA-24 Comanche had departed Merrill Field Airport in Anchorage bound for Seldovia Airport and crashed at approximately 1:18 PM, according to Alaska State Troopers. The plane went into Seldovia Slough and became submerged in 15 to 17 feet of water, according to KMXT, forcing troopers and emergency crews to wait nearly five hours until low tide, around 6:30 p.m., before they could extract the bodies.
A Family Connection Between Pilot and Passenger
The pilot has been identified as 68-year-old Eric Middlebrook of Anchorage. Middlebrook was the older brother of passenger Ronald Schmidt, one of six siblings raised in Northern California, per myMotherLode. Middlebrook grew up in Northern California before relocating to Alaska in 1981, while Schmidt went on to work in Silicon Valley, the outlet reports.
Middlebrook was far from an inexperienced flyer. He served as mayor of Bethel, Alaska, in 2008 and again from 2010 to 2011, and worked as a commercial refrigeration technician who spent decades piloting small aircraft across rural Alaska to repair village coolers, according to SFGATE. Bethel is a regional hub community along the Kuskokwim River in Western Alaska, and that background undercuts any assumption that unfamiliarity with the aircraft or terrain played a role — though the exact cause of the crash remains under investigation.
A Difficult, Multi-Agency Recovery Effort
Pulling the wreckage and the victims from the slough required a coordinated response from Alaska State Troopers, Wildlife Troopers aboard the patrol vessel P/V Augustine dispatched from Anchor Point, a state police helicopter from Anchorage, and local Seldovia residents who rushed to help. Seldovia sits roughly 135 miles southwest of Anchorage on the Kenai Peninsula and has no direct road connection to Alaska's highway system, according to FLYING Magazine, which notes that small planes and boats function as the town's primary transportation lifelines rather than optional recreation.
Rural Alaskan airstrips like Seldovia's operate without air traffic control towers, meaning pilots must navigate visually and self-announce their positions — a factor the same FLYING Magazine report ties to Alaska's disproportionately high share of U.S. general aviation accidents relative to its population. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the cause of the crash, and NTSB investigators documented the crash site during low tide before overseeing a helicopter sling operation that hauled the submerged Piper wreckage across Kachemak Bay to Homer for detailed technical examination, per AeroCorner.
Part of a Deadly Stretch for Alaska Aviation
The Seldovia crash came less than a week after another fatal accident on August 20 near Cape Newenham in western Alaska, where a chartered Cessna 441 carrying eight military contractors and Army Corps employees went down in heavy fog, killing everyone aboard, according to CBS News. Together, the two crashes accounted for 12 aviation deaths in Alaska within a six-day span.
The back-to-back tragedies prompted U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan to call the fatalities “heartbreaking and unacceptable” and to request immediate briefings from the NTSB and FAA on Alaska flight safety, SFGATE reports. The NTSB typically issues preliminary accident reports within 30 days, and investigators have not yet said whether mechanical failure, weather, or pilot disorientation contributed to the Seldovia crash.
