Aeronautical Services Cessna 206E accident
Cessna 206E · Accident: on ground/water collision with terrain/water during landing
From Orcas Island Airport (KORS) to Stuart Island Airpark (7WA5)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA05LA141
- 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 206E
- 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
- N9428G
- Operator
- Aeronautical Services
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Orcas Island Airport (KORS), Orcas Island, WATo Stuart Island Airpark (7WA5), Stuart Island, 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 › Airspeed(vref), excessive
- Pilot in command › Maneuver to avoid obstructions, intentional
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Due to the restrictions created by marginal VFR conditions, the pilot entered the pattern on a close-in dogleg to final for a landing to the west. Just as he was starting to turn final, he heard another pilot broadcast that he was departing Stuart Island to the east. The pilot then transmitted, "Aircraft close in, landing to the west, Stuart". He then prepared to execute a go-around. But, as he rounded the corner of the island and rolled out on final, the pilot saw an aircraft pull off of the runway to the grassy area to its south. He therefore decided to continue his approach to a full-stop landing. Upon touchdown on the 2,000 foot runway, the aircraft encountered a significant amount of standing water, and the pilot immediately retracted the flaps in order to get more weight on the wheels for braking. Because of the amount of standing water, the aircraft began to hydroplane, and as it neared the end of the runway, it still had not come to a stop. In an attempt to keep the aircraft from going off the far end of the runway, the pilot intentionally executed a sharp turn to the right. Just after the turn was initiated, the left main gear and the nose gear dug into the soft muddy surface, resulting in the aircraft tipping up on its left side and the left wing contacting the runway surface. During the investigation it was determined that a heavy rain shower had passed through the area about 15 minutes prior to the landing, and that there was still a significant portion of the runway surface that had standing water on it. During a post-accident interview, the pilot started that he did not realize that there was so much standing water on the runway until after he touched down and it started spraying up on the bottom of the wing and onto the windshield. He further stated that if he had realized that the potential for hydroplaning was so great, he would have slowed his approach speed to compensate for the overly-wet conditions.
Probable cause
The pilot's excessive airspeed on final for the current runway surface conditions, and the intentional obstruction avoidance maneuver he executed when it became clear the aircraft was about to go off the end of the runway. Factors include the pilot's improper decision to land on a surface that he had not first inspected from the air, clouds and rain in the area, and a wet, muddy landing surface.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA05LA141
- Event ID
- 20050901X01355
- Case number
- SEA05LA141
- 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: afea7e43b57c190791c190491e4723510e9f690c175a062d4b1d412455fa9d4d; retrieved 2026-09-18T15:00:29.127Z.