Rust's Flying Service de Havilland DHC-2 accident
de Havilland DHC-2 · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Lake Hood Seaplane Base (LHD) to HOHOLITNA RIVER, AK
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC98FA145
- 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
- 5 · 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
- N1433Z
- Operator
- Rust'S Flying Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lake Hood Seaplane Base (LHD), Anchorage, AKTo HOHOLITNA RIVER, 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
- 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
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Stall, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The float equipped airplane was attempting to cross a mountain pass, following two other company airplanes. The first two pilots, and passengers, described five to seven miles visibility, 700 feet ceilings, clouds hanging on the mountainsides, and misty rain. The route of flight required several turns in the pass. The pilot had not flown through the pass in marginal Visual Flight Rules (VFR) weather before this flight. After the first two airplanes went through the pass, they lost radio contact with the accident pilot, and did not see or hear from him again. The wreckage was later located at the head of an intersecting canyon, two miles before the correct pass. The airplane had been modified with a Short Take Off and Landing (STOL) kit. Canadian certification flight tests had determined that this modification eliminated aerodynamic warning of impending stalls, and therefore required an audible stall warning. Company pilots indicated it was common for the stall warning system to activate at an airspeed 10-15 miles per hour above the actual stall. At the time of the accident, the airplane did not have the ventral fin installed, and a takeoff flaps setting was selected. The audible stall warning circuit breaker was found in the pulled (disabled) position.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate airspeed which resulted in an inadvertent stall. Factors associated with this accident were the pilot's unfamiliarity with the geographic area, the low clouds, his becoming disoriented, and the blind canyon into which he flew. An additional factor was the intentionally disabled stall warning system.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC98FA145
- Event ID
- 20001211X10967
- Case number
- ANC98FA145
- 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: 3f96ab06a4e3473cffffc60f4a0a8f41d8f5efa6608a90a1e5a9e4697a86ed87; retrieved 2026-09-18T13:21:14.460Z.