West Isle Air Cessna U206F accident
Cessna U206F · Accident: on ground/water collision with terrain/water during landing
From Anacortes Airport (74S) to Stuart Island West Airport (2WA3)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA05LA036
- 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
- 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 U206F
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 206
- 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
- N8313Q
- Operator
- West Isle Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Anacortes Airport (74S), Anacortes, WATo Stuart Island West Airport (2WA3), Prevost, 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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
- On ground/water collision with terrain/water
- 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 › Ground loop/swerve, intentional
- Pilot in command › Unsafe/hazardous condition, not identified
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot did a "fly-over" to check out the runway conditions including wind direction and speed. He said that the runway was clear of snow, and there was no indication of ice or frost. The pilot said that the winds in the nearby bay appeared to be 10 knots or less. He said that immediately after touchdown the airplane felt like it had no traction; braking action was poor to none. He said that after several hundred feet of ground roll, he felt a "strong" gust of wind on his tail. The pilot said that he decided to swerve north of the runway rather than impact the trees on the end of the runway. He impacted a soft mound of dirt which was not initially visible, "thus causing the airplane to slowly nose over." The airplane's left strut was broken, the left wing was bent aft, the engine firewall and chin were crushed, and the aft fuselage was crushed and bent.
Probable cause
The pilot not identifying unsafe landing conditions, and his subsequent intentional swerve during the landing roll resulting in impacting a ditch. Contributing factors were the ice/frost on the grass/dirt one-way runway (1,560 feet in length), the unexpected tail wind gust, and the ditch he encountered after he swerved to avoid going past the end of the runway into trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA05LA036
- Event ID
- 20050118X00065
- Case number
- SEA05LA036
- 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, coordinates. 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: b34a85c5a6c3822886faef999fbf2566f957e2ab39602eaef726dc83c184d745; retrieved 2026-09-18T15:08:33.170Z.