Desert Air Transport Douglas DC-3C accident
Douglas DC-3C · Accident: fire during initial climb
From Boise Air Terminal/Gowen Field (BOI) to Salt Lake City International Airport (SLC)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA97FA034
- 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
- 2 · 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
Douglas DC-3C
- Aircraft type
- Douglas DC-3
- 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
- N75142
- Operator
- Desert Air Transport
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Boise Air Terminal/Gowen Field (BOI)To Salt Lake City International Airport (SLC), Salt Lake City, UT
- 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
- Fire
- 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
- Engine compartment › Fire
- Pilot in command › Airspeed(vmc), not maintained
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The DC-3C took off on runway 10L and immediately executed a right turn followed by a left turn back toward the airport declaring a fire aboard. Dark night visual meteorological conditions existed. Witnesses observed 'flames' or an 'orange glow' coming from the right engine. A small number of aluminum fragments identified from the aft edge of the right engine accessory cowling were found along the ground just short of the ground impact site. These fragments displayed signs of heat distress but no significant melting. An examination of the right engine and accessory section revealed no evidence of a preimpact fire, and sooting and metal splatter on the leading edge of the right horizontal stabilizer was minimal. Spectral analysis of radio transmissions revealed no evidence of significant divergence of engine RPM between the two engines. Postcrash propeller examination revealed approximate blade pitch angles of 18-19 degrees and 30-32 degrees for the right and left propellers respectively upon impact. Propeller slash mark dimensions associated with the right propeller resulted in propeller RPM of approximately 1750 to 2570 over a range of 68 to 100 knots respectively. The first officer advised the PIC (broadcasting over the tower frequency) 'we're gonna stall' approximately 10 seconds before the impact. The aircraft was in a left turn back toward runways 28 left and right when the right wing struck the ground and the aircraft cartwheeled to a stop. A postcrash fire destroyed the cockpit area and inboard right wing.
Probable cause
A fire within the right engine compartment of undetermined cause and the pilot-in-command's failure to maintain airspeed above the aircraft's minimum control speed. A factor contributing to the accident was the dark night environmental conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA97FA034
- Event ID
- 20001208X07241
- Case number
- SEA97FA034
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1996-12-10.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 0d11f7272f08302c5f1ec6b6902abf49892d8b58e69f236fd64244333f3541c4; retrieved 2026-09-18T13:32:20.699Z.