The Flying Wiens by Richard Wien

A Minnesota farm boy ventured north to Alaska in 1924 where he fulfilled his dream of earning a living in the sky and launched Wien Alaska Airways— Alaska’s first airline — three years later. It was a risky move. Exposed to the harsh Arctic climate in open-cockpit biplanes, Noel Wien recorded historic “firsts” nearly everywhere he flew in the early years, despite a lack of airfields, maps, weather reports, and radio communications. Passenger and cargo flights replaced steamboats and dogsleds in the vast territory. A century later, Noel Wien’s son Richard describes how his family progressed from primitive aircraft to passenger jetliners. The author shares his own experiences, too — close calls, extreme weather, unprecedented retrieval of downed aircraft, and coming-of-age flying in the Arctic. Having witnessed the grief of friends and families in the aftermath of accidents in which pilots were killed, Richard Wien emerged as an outspoken advocate of aviation safety. He also became an entrepreneur, industry leader, civic activist, and the new patriarch of the Wien family, which by 2025 spanned four generations and included fifteen pilots, none of whom had ever lost a passenger while flying many tens of thousands of miles.