Taquan Air Service de Havilland DHC-2 accident
de Havilland DHC-2 · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From PORT JOHNSON, AK to Ketchikan International Airport (KTN)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC97LA014
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 1 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- Charter & commuter
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
de Havilland DHC-2
- Aircraft type
- de Havilland DHC-2
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N67694
- Operator
- Taquan Air Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From PORT JOHNSON, AKTo Ketchikan International Airport (KTN), AK
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Initial climb
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Loss of control in flight
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Stall
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Compensation for wind conditions, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Stall, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the passenger, he and the pilot had just taken off, and as they were climbing out over an open water portion of a bay, the pilot said, 'here comes a gust.' Reportedly, the pilot added engine power, and the airplane began descending. The right wing started to dip, and the nose started to drop. The pilot had the control yoke turned all the way to the left, then yelled that they were going in. The airplane crashed in the water, and the passenger exited the airplane through the windshield. He did not see the pilot. The deceased pilot was found still strapped in his seat several days later, when a portion of the wreckage was recovered.
Probable cause
the pilot's inadequate compensation for wind conditions, and failure to maintain adequate airspeed, which resulted in an inadvertent stall and collision with terrain (water). A factor associated with the accident was the gusty wind condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC97LA014
- Event ID
- 20001208X07125
- Case number
- ANC97LA014
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 23048624ca8b850eb3ab5bfaf881801bca017b6c628dad342bf9344c2e11639d; retrieved 2026-09-18T13:31:46.960Z.