The pilot missing for four days now along with three National Park Service employees in rugged terrain in Western Alaska has a history of questionable judgment calls, according to a lawsuit filed in Anchorage in 2009. Marco Alletto and his employer, Branch River Air Services, are in the process of being sued by a group of bear hunters who say the Italian-born pilot crashed not once, but twice during the same trip and, along the way, refused to call for help.

A call to Alletto's attorney on Tuesday was not immediately returned.
He was reported to be traveling from Anchorage to Oregon.

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit against Alletto -- Jerry Bagneschi, his 12-year-old grandson, and two of Bagneschi's friends -- had hired Branch River Air to fly them to an area near Puale Bay in Sept. 2007, according to the complaint. An unidentified Branch Air pilot flew them in. Alletto was the pilot sent to retrieve them a week later on Oct. 7.

What the hunters didn't know, according to their lawsuit, is that Branch Air was sending in to get them a pilot who had only weeks earlier completed a Federal Aviation Administration mandated re-examination. The federal action required that after finding Alletto at fault for a crash in August at Crosswind Lake, 60 miles northwest of King Salmon. Alletto, in that case, attempted to back-taxi in rough conditions after dropping off passengers. A wind gust upended one wing, forcing the other to cut through the water and strike the bottom of the shallow lake. The FAA deemed Alletto had "demonstrated questionable aeronautical decision making," according to the complaint.

Sixteen days after the FAA re-exam, according to the lawsuit, Alletto was trying to take off with the four hunters from a soft, rain-soaked runway despite warnings it would be problematic to do so. Here is the hunters' version of what happened next.

Alletto tried to throttle the plane through the soft mud, causing the tail to go airborne. The still spinning propeller then hit the ground and the plane came to a stop. The group worked two hours to dig the plane out of the mud. Afterward, Alletto said he would be unable to continue on, citing FAA rules banning the transport of passengers in the damaged plane. The pilot, however, later changed his mind, deciding he would either obtain a replacement propeller or transport the hunters on a different plane. But in the end, to the hunters' dismay, Alletto attempted to fix the bent propeller blades himself.

"Marco Alletto found a medium sized rock and beat on the ends of the propeller. Marco Alletto pounded on the blades of the propeller over and over again, until Marco Alletto was convinced that the propeller blades were somewhat straight," states the lawsuit, which goes on to describe how Alletto also used a pocket knife to shave off any rough edges on the blades.

Alletto then climbed into the Beaver, fired up the engine, revved the prop and, noticing no "unusual vibrations," deemed the plane airworthy. This time, however, he planned to lighten the plane's load and stated he would only take two passengers at a time. The plan was to ferry them in two groups to a runway adjacent to a nearby lake, and then, from the new take-off location, carry all four men on to King Salmon.

Hunters Jeffrey Rutledge and 12-year-old Zecaraiah Robinson were loaded along with some of the gear and off they went in the plane. But the landing at nearby Becharoff Lake didn't go well. Alletto, according to court records, "ground-looped" the Beaver and cart-wheeled the plane, leaving his passengers trapped in their seatbelts as he kicked and swore at the aircraft. Neither Rutledge nor Robinson saw Alletto activate the emergency locator beacon. The hunters believe it was because he wanted to cover up the accident, worried about another FAA finding of negligence.

According to the lawsuit, Alletto also told Rutledge not to call for help on the radio, and said that it was of no use attempting to call Alaska State Troopers because the mountains would block the signal.

"Marco Alletto refused to use the radio to call for help on the emergency frequency," according to the hunters.