Empire Airlines Flight 665
Cessna 208B · Accident: in flight collision with object while maneuvering
From Bellingham International Airport (BLI) to Orcas Island Airport (ORS)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA01FA001
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 208B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 208
- 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
- N941FE
- Operator
- Empire Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bellingham International Airport (BLI), Bellingham, WATo Orcas Island Airport (ORS), EASTSOUND, WA
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- In flight collision with object
- 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
- Tree(s)
- 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 › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Flight into known adverse weather, attempted
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
With a reported ceiling of 500 feet and visibility of 2 miles, the pilot requested and received a Special Visual Flight Rules (VFR) clearance to depart the Bellingham airport. He then took off and called clear of Bellingham's Class D airspace. A witness reported seeing the aircraft flying very low over water near the accident site, appearing to go in and out of clouds, and subsequently seeing it turn toward rising wooded terrain and disappear into the clouds. The aircraft crashed shortly thereafter. Witnesses reported very low ceilings and fog in the accident area at the time. Pieces of the aircraft's left wing and left horizontal stabilizer, along with a felled treetop, were found between the location of the witness's sighting and the main crash site, on or near the crest of a hill about 1/4 mile from the main crash site. These pieces exhibited leading-edge and primary structure damage, and leading-edge-embedded plant material, consistent with the pieces separating from the aircraft upon contact with trees. Wreckage and impact signatures at the main crash site were indicative of an uncontrolled impact with the ground. Investigators found no evidence of any aircraft malfunctions or cargo anomalies occurring prior to the apparent tree strikes.
Probable cause
The pilot's attempted flight into known adverse weather conditions, and his subsequent failure to maintain altitude above, or clearance with, trees. Factors contributing to the accident included low ceilings, fog, the pilot's low-altitude flight, rising terrain, and trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA01FA001
- Event ID
- 20001212X22249
- Case number
- SEA01FA001
- 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: 6614e66a08ed35aa1426b5ba5266749729b79037dec0477ae87fee9a4fdd2e4a; retrieved 2026-09-18T13:11:30.025Z.