LAX97LA157 · de Havilland DHC-6-300
de Havilland DHC-6-300 · Accident en route
From Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport (OAK) to Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (HNL)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX97LA157
- 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
- 0 · 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
- General aviation
- 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-6-300
- Aircraft type
- de Havilland DHC-6
- 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
- N242CA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport (OAK), Oakland, CATo Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (HNL), Honolulu, HI
- 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 91: General Aviation
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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 › Fuel consumption calculations, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On a ferry flight from Oakland, California, to Honolulu, Hawaii, the pilot declared a low fuel emergency and diverted toward Hilo, Hawaii. Approximately 2.5 hours later, the aircraft was ditched in the Pacific ocean. The pilot evacuated the aircraft before it sank and was rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard. He stated that, under flight planned conditions, the aircraft departed Oakland with sufficient fuel onboard to reach the intended destination with a 2-hour fuel reserve. However, the winds at flight altitude, which were reported as light and variable at the preflight weather briefing, developed into a significant headwind during the flight. At a point 7 hours and 10 minutes into the flight, the pilot determined that his fuel remaining was 8 hours and 40 minutes, with 7 hours and 40 minutes remaining to destination. Three hours later, the pilot determined that his 2-hour reserve was gone. He declared an emergency and diverted toward the closest airport, which was Hilo. Prior to fuel system exhaustion, the pilot elected to ditch the aircraft with power.
Probable cause
the pilot's inadequate en route fuel consumption calculations, which led to his failure to recognize a deteriorating fuel duration versus time-to-go situation in a more timely way.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX97LA157
- Event ID
- 20001208X07753
- Case number
- LAX97LA157
- 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 1997-04-13.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 0afb62756b30cc7a3b2d4b7bcd78ce19ef0831d8b6d5321d5f70bb788f86e092; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:28:13.327Z.