Pacific Wings Flight 2005
Cessna 208 · Incident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Kahului International Airport (OGG) to Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (HNL)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC04IA046
- 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
- Incident
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
Cessna 208
- 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
- N302PW
- Operator
- Pacific Wings
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kahului International Airport (OGG), Kahului, HITo 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 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
- In flight encounter with weather
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- None
Cause areas
- Weather condition › Turbulence
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot was conducting a scheduled commuter flight between the Hawaiian Islands of Maui and Oahu with four passengers. The flight route was along the northern shores of the mountainous island of Molokai. The pilot climbed the airplane to 2,500 feet msl for the flight between the two island communities. Once the flight was within gliding distance of the northern shore of Molokai, the flight descended to 1,000 feet msl to allow the passengers a view of the coastline on the left side of the airplane. The coastline along the northern shore of Molokai has a 3,000-foot high cliff. As the flight progressed westbound along the coastline, the airplane encountered turbulence and dropped abruptly. During the turbulence, a passenger seated in the rear-most row of seats, on the right side of the airplane, struck his head on an air vent located just above his seat, and sustained a scalp laceration. Immediately after the turbulence encounter, the pilot climbed the airplane and proceeded directly to the flight's destination airport of Honolulu, and landed without further incident. After arrival in Honolulu, the passenger was transported by ambulance to a local hospital.
On February 7, 2006, this occurrence was reclassified from an accident to an incident and this narrative was modified.
Probable cause
An in-flight encounter with turbulence during cruise flight, which resulted in a minor injury to a passenger.
On February 7, 2006, this occurrence was reclassified from an accident to an incident and this narrative was modified.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC04IA046
- Event ID
- 20040601X00710
- Case number
- ANC04IA046
- 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, damage. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2004-04-21.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 86aa7d6d63a5ebc6f78a35e2982c49edd6902ff7cebdd2301b5418a6a3c55242; retrieved 2026-09-18T15:26:23.579Z.