Eric Middlebrook, 68, of Anchorage, a veteran Alaska aviator who once served as mayor of Bethel, died alongside three others when their small plane crashed into shallow tidal water next to Seldovia, a remote coastal town in Alaska, on August 26, 2026 — four fatalities in all. Alaska State Troopers, who have now identified everyone aboard, were notified at about 1:18 p.m. local time that the single-engine Piper PA-24 had crashed into the Seldovia Slough.
Middlebrook was at the controls. His three passengers all came from the San Francisco Bay Area — Ronald Schmidt, 65, and Lance Schmidt, 20, both of San Jose, and Daniel Simons, 82, who made his home in Los Gatos. Ronald Schmidt was Middlebrook’s younger brother. All four died.
Seldovia was the destination logged for the Piper PA-24-260 when it lifted off from Merrill Field Airport in Anchorage. That small community sits about 136 miles to the southwest, on Kachemak Bay across the water from Homer, and the aircraft never reached it. Instead the plane came to rest 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 response was agonizingly slow because of where the plane went down. Crews had no way in until the water dropped. Once the tide pulled back, troopers reached the fuselage and brought out all four bodies, which were sent 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 plane take off, then heard it crash. One said the aftermath left onlookers terrified as they waited to learn whether anyone aboard had survived.
No road reaches Seldovia. Boats and aircraft are the only way in for residents and visitors alike, so the town’s small airport — and the pilots flying into it — amount to a lifeline instead of a convenience.
A Longtime Pilot and Former Mayor
Middlebrook was a familiar figure in Alaska aviation and in the state’s civic life as well. The mayor’s office in Bethel — the hub community of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, in Alaska’s southwest — was one he held in 2008 and again from October 2010 to October 2011, and for years he hauled refrigeration equipment by air out to villages scattered across the delta. It was the kind of unglamorous cargo work that keeps food cold and supply chains intact in places with no roads in or out.
Decades in Alaska had earned him a reputation as an experienced pilot. Northern California was where Middlebrook grew up before moving to Alaska in 1981 — the same region his three passengers called home.
Grief from the crash has traveled south to the Bay Area, home to the Schmidts and Simons. A San Jose address was shared by Ronald Schmidt and Lance Schmidt. At 82, Simons was the oldest of the four aboard. The names were released by Alaska State Troopers after next of kin were notified.
What Investigators Know So Far
What brought the plane down is the subject of an investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). Early information suggests the pilot may have been attempting an aborted landing or climb-out, and the aircraft struck trees before it went into the water. Clint Johnson, who heads the NTSB’s Alaska regional office, said investigators had heard “there may have been an attempted go-around” but stressed, “we’re not drawing any conclusions.” Those details remain preliminary and could change; the agency’s investigations routinely take months to produce a factual report and longer still to reach a probable cause.
Before drawing conclusions, investigators typically examine the airframe and engine, the weather conditions at the time, the pilot’s flight history and any available radar or witness data. Central to that work will be the wreckage recovered from the slough.
Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan called the crash “horrendous” and said his thoughts were with the families, adding: “We have the NTSB up here, FAA doing the investigation. But we’ve got to keep making the investments.” Nowhere else in the country is small aircraft leaned on the way it is in Alaska, where hundreds of communities can be reached only by air for much of the year. That dependence has kept air safety near the center of state politics for generations.
Less than a week before the Seldovia crash, a separate fatal plane accident in southwest Alaska killed eight people. That crash was on August 20. The NTSB says the aircraft, a chartered twin-engine Cessna 441 Conquest, went down during a second landing attempt in thick fog near Cape Newenham, at an airport set in steep, mountainous terrain with an uphill, one-way runway. Two of the eight killed have been identified as U.S. Army Corps of Engineers fire protection engineer Sabrina Hansen, 45, and mechanical engineer Hayden Scalis, who were traveling to inspect a fire suppression system at the Cape Newenham Long Range Radar Site. “It’s still hard to believe that mom is gone. I still reminisce a lot about her,” Hansen’s son Kaleb Hansen said. Nothing links the two crashes — they were separate incidents — yet attention has returned to the dangers of small-aircraft travel in a state where flying is frequently the only practical way to reach one town from another.
Federal investigators now hold the questions about the final minutes of the flight out of Merrill Field. No determination of cause has been announced by the safety board, and as the inquiry got underway the bodies of Middlebrook, the Schmidts, and Simons were sent for autopsy. 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.