Quick Facts<\/h4>
| Nationality<\/td> | American \ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8<\/td><\/tr> |
| Achievement<\/td> | Founded Alaska’s first airline (1927); first flight between Anchorage and Fairbanks (1924); first to fly above Arctic Circle<\/td><\/tr> |
| Airline<\/td> | Wien Air Alaska (founded 1927 as Wien Alaska Airways, ceased flying 1984)<\/td><\/tr> |
| Aircraft<\/td> | Hisso Standard J1, Fairchild monoplane, Ford Trimotor, DC-3<\/td><\/tr> |
| Born \/ Died<\/td> | 8 Jun 1899 \u2013 19 Jul 1977 (age 78)<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n![\"Noel](\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/8\/87\/N275WC_9.84.jpg\") Alaska in the 1920s was not a place that aviation had conquered \u2014 it was a place that aviation had barely noticed. The territory was vast, roadless, and accessible only by sea or dogsled for most of its interior. Wien changed that. In 1924 he made the first flight between Anchorage and Fairbanks \u2014 under four hours in the air, on a route that took two days by rail. By 1927 he was flying regular commercial service between Fairbanks and Nome. He became the first pilot to fly above the Arctic Circle, and the first to make a round-trip flight between Alaska and Asia, crossing the Bering Strait in open-cockpit aircraft in conditions that would ground aircraft today.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n The same year, he founded Wien Air Alaska \u2014 the state’s first airline. He recruited other pilots, personally teaching many of them to fly, and expanded service from single-engine monoplanes to Ford Trimotors to Douglas DC-3s and eventually to jet aircraft. The routes and techniques he pioneered \u2014 flying by landmarks, by river systems, by the shape of mountains seen in every season and every weather \u2014 became the standard for Alaskan bush aviation. Pilots he trained trained pilots who trained more pilots. The lineage runs straight through to the bush pilots operating today.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n The Calculus of Extreme Flying<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nWien flew in conditions that pilots in the continental United States could barely imagine: temperatures at which hydraulic fluid becomes gel, visibility measured in feet rather than miles, terrain that could kill you in a dozen different ways if your engine quit. He developed a philosophy of extreme caution and extreme preparation \u2014 pre-flighting his aircraft by hand even in temperatures that could freeze exposed skin in seconds, studying weather with an obsessiveness born of knowing that there were no rescue services if he went down in the Brooks Range.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Noel Wien: In His Own Words<\/h2>\r\n\r\nA rare interview with Noel Wien himself, recorded in 1972, in which the pioneering Alaska bush pilot describes the conditions, challenges, and extraordinary resourcefulness required to fly in the Territory of Alaska in the 1920s and 1930s.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n |