It's been proven time and time again that people are not equipped to judge size or wingspan of flying objects. Furthermore, most often they are hundreds if not thousands of feet off in calculating distance.

I saw a in depth study of that guy in the plane and from his angle and distance he's likely wrong. As for people on the ground, probably wrong as well. It would take a bird being at arms length for me to believe any of these stories.

I live in Alaska (now Fairbanks) this sighting is what first got me interested in Cryptozoology. I grew up on Prince of Wales Island. There was a series of reported sightings that started in Southeast actually on my island (around Ketchikan) and headed Northwest. It appeared in a local newspaper in my home town months before the report in the Anchorage one. The reports said the bird (just one) was about the size of a Cessna (small float plane) and solid black or dark in color. The first report was 2 miles out of town out Port Saint Nicholas rd. and was made by a good friend of mine. The bird was feeding on fish scraps dumped on the beach and was accompanied by numerous eagles also feeding. A couple weeks later 2 forest service workers witnessed it while working on a nearby island.
Of corse most of this was laughed at, and just dismissed as drunk natives (yes racist I know but that is simply how some people see them. Not me though lol) The fact that in Hydaburg (another small town on the island populated by mainly natives, the Haida in fact) people claim to see bigfoot on a regular basis doesn't help.
So I propose that this was a migratory action of the bird. Alaska is vast and largely unpopulated. It is not unfeasible that such a bird could be living here.

It made me smile seeing this post so I just had to say something.

-Shane