INTERVIEW: Ariel Tweto takes to the skies in ‘Flying Wild Alaska’

For Ariel Tweto, star of Discovery Channel’s Flying Wild Alaska, adventure is in her blood. From a young age, when she shot her first caribou with her grandmother, she’s tamed the uniqueness of the Alaskan wilderness and taken to the skies for her family’s airline business. The Twetos are not exactly The Brady Bunch. They earn a living from transporting people and supplies to the most inaccessible areas in the world. It’s a different type of life and profession, but for Ariel, it’s just another day with the family.

“In California and New York and stuff like that, people aren’t hiking and fishing for their food, or they’re not jumping in a plane every day just so they can go get necessities,” Ariel said recently during a phone interview. “(In Alaska), even if you want to go to the next town over, you have to keep a plane. This is not normal.”

Ariel, 24, works with her sister Ayla, and their two parents, Jim and Ferno, up in the northern reaches of Unalakleet, AK. It’s this remoteness from the big cities of the South that make Flying Wild Alaska a view into a mostly unknown world. “People like things they’re not used to, just because it opens their eyes,” Ariel said. “The people on the show, like my mom and dad and our pilots, they are all just fun people to watch. So I think that’s why people like it.”

The success of the reality series has come fast. Discovery recently kicked off the show’s third season, and viewers are continuing to tune in to see what adventures the Twetos and their business, ERA Alaska, encounter on a daily basis.

With the cameras around for so many hours, the family has had to adjust to the spotlight. “Sometimes when you want privacy … you want to get away from everything,” Ariel said. “They are with us all the time. We film about three and a half months for each season. The cameras start at 8 in the morning and don’t go off until sometimes 10 at night. Sometimes in the summer when we’re filming, it doesn’t get dark until 4 or 5 in the morning. So they’re still rolling.”

As audience members left the Tweto family in season two, Ariel had just completed her first solo flight. During that tense scene, here’s what ran through Ariel’s head, all alone up in the sky: “Oh man, for my first two landings, I was like a rock star. … I was like, Oh my God this is pretty easy. And then by the second time after I took off again, I could feel the wind switch. And then it just got super windy, and I was being blown off course. I was coming in for my final approach, and I was way off. And then my radio stopped working, so I couldn’t call my mom or dad and ask what was going on. I panicked a little bit and got sort of nervous. I should have kept circling the air and just waited for the wind to die down, because it does go up and down so fast. But I panicked a little bit and just forced it down. Good thing I didn’t ruin the close.”

In the upcoming third season, she continues to learn how to fly on her journey to a private license. Another thread of the season will be Jim Tweto’s challenges of trying to build a cabin in the woods. And with any show about Alaska, there will be one constant throughout most episodes: “There’s a lot of bad weather.”

In recent years, with the cameras always rolling, Ariel said her parents have been focused on “work, work, work.” But the family still savors its time away from the airplanes, when they can just relax and have some fun. “The company wasn’t always this big,” she said. “(My parents) had a lot more time to help out with us kids. We used to have a dog team and we would race all the time. They just got so busy. So now for them it’s work, work, work, and they don’t really play that much. But I still get to play. I miss having them do all the fun stuff. My dad wants to make this business successful, and that’s what makes him happy.”

As far as working with her loved ones, Ariel wouldn’t trade her life for any other. “That’s a perk about all this. I get to work with my parents, and I live with them most of the time. I consider them one of my best friends. It sounds so cheesy. I like hanging out with them all the time. It’s definitely brought us together.”

To make the show exciting, the Twetos try to lead interesting, TV-friendly lives. “In reality, everyone’s life isn’t constantly dramatic and exciting,” Ariel said. “There are sometimes when we’re like, what should we do to make this more exciting? We’ll go on a camping trip or something, something we wouldn’t have to do without the cameras following us. That part has been exciting, just trying to step out of our comfort zone and do fun stuff.”

Although Ariel said she’ll always be part of the family business, she plans on branching out from the Alaskan wilderness and tackling the obstacles on the horizon. “I want to go travel and see the world and meet people and get out of Alaska,” she said. “There’s a whole other world outside of Alaska, and I’m excited to explore. I can’t make plans, because my plans change every day. So I have no idea what I’m going to do.”

The exposure that Flying Wild Alaska has brought the small town of Unalakleet has been overwhelmingly positive, Ariel said. Her family and friends love the spotlight and the chance to be seen on television.

“All my cousins and relatives, they love it. And they get a kick when some of them are on it. They get to see themselves on national TV, so they think it’s so cool. That gets me excited when they’re excited, so I’m happy about it. We got a lot of positive feedback, so we’re really happy.”

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

• Flying Wild Alaska airs Fridays at 10 p.m. on the Discovery Channel. Click here for more information.