Alaska State Troopers have identified the four people killed when a small plane went down in shallow tidal water beside the remote coastal town of Seldovia, Alaska — among them a veteran aviator who once served as mayor of Bethel. The single-engine Piper PA-24 crashed into the Seldovia Slough at about 1:18 p.m. local time on August 26, 2026.
The pilot was Eric Middlebrook, 68, of Anchorage. All three passengers had come from the San Francisco Bay Area. Two of them — Ronald Schmidt, 65, and Lance Schmidt, 20 — lived in San Jose, while the third, 82-year-old Daniel Simons, made his home in Los Gatos. All four died.
The aircraft, a Piper PA-24-260, had lifted off from Merrill Field Airport in Anchorage and was headed for Seldovia, a small community roughly 135 miles to the southwest on the far side of Kachemak Bay. It never reached the runway. The plane ended up underwater — some 15 feet down — just off the shoreline, its outline visible beneath the surface of the slough.
A Recovery Delayed by the Tide
The location made the response agonizingly slow. Crews had no way in until the water dropped. Once the tide pulled back, troopers finally reached the fuselage and brought out all four bodies. The remains went to the state medical examiner’s office for autopsy.
Video from the scene captured the submerged plane sitting in the slough, and footage taken the following day showed a helicopter hoisting the wreckage out of the water. People nearby said they heard the aircraft, then saw it drop. One said the aftermath left onlookers terrified as they waited to learn whether anyone aboard had survived.
Seldovia is not connected to Alaska’s road system. Residents and visitors reach it by boat or by air, which makes the town’s small airport — and the pilots who serve it — a lifeline rather than a convenience.
A Longtime Pilot and Former Mayor
Middlebrook was a familiar figure in Alaska aviation and in Alaska civic life. He served as mayor of Bethel, the hub community of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta in the state’s southwest, and he spent years hauling refrigeration equipment by air out to villages scattered across the delta — the kind of unglamorous cargo work that keeps food cold and supply chains intact in places with no roads in or out.
He had lived in Alaska for decades and was regarded as an experienced pilot. Middlebrook was originally from Northern California — the same region his three passengers called home.
The loss has rippled south to the Bay Area, where the Schmidts and Simons lived. Ronald Schmidt and Lance Schmidt, 45 years apart in age, shared a San Jose address. Simons, at 82, was the oldest of the four aboard. Alaska State Troopers released the names after next of kin were notified.
What Investigators Know So Far
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is investigating what brought the plane down. Early findings point to a possible aborted landing or climb-out, with the aircraft clipping trees before it went into the water. Those details are preliminary and could change; NTSB investigations routinely take months to produce a factual report and longer still to reach a probable cause.
Investigators will typically examine the airframe and engine, weather conditions at the time, the pilot’s flight history and any available radar or witness data before drawing conclusions. The wreckage recovered from the slough will be central to that work.
Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan called the crash “heartbreaking and unacceptable” and said aviation safety must remain a top priority in the state. Alaska depends on small aircraft to a degree unmatched anywhere else in the country, with dozens of communities reachable only by air for much of the year — a reliance that has kept air safety near the center of the state’s politics for generations.
The Seldovia crash came less than a week after a separate fatal plane accident in western Alaska that killed eight people. The two were separate incidents, but together they have renewed attention on the risks that accompany small-aircraft travel across a state where flying is often the only practical way to get from one town to the next.
For now, the questions surrounding the final minutes of the flight from Merrill Field remain with federal investigators. The safety board had not announced a determination of cause, and the bodies of Middlebrook, the Schmidts and Simons had been sent for autopsy as the inquiry got underway. Any formal findings will come from the NTSB, not from the preliminary details that surfaced in the days after the aircraft was pulled from the water.
