Tatonduk Outfitters Douglas DC-6 accident
Douglas DC-6 · Accident during takeoff
From Alpine Airstrip (AK15) to Deadhorse Airport (PASC)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC14CA012
- 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
- Airline
- 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
Douglas DC-6
- Aircraft type
- Douglas DC-6
- 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
- N100CE
- Operator
- Tatonduk Outfitters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Alpine Airstrip (AK15), Nuiqsut, AKTo Deadhorse Airport (PASC), Deadhorse, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 60 years (built 1953)
- 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 121: Air Carrier
- 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
- Takeoff
- Defining eventThe 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the operator, the purpose of the short, 22 minute flight was to deliver a load of oversized, oil drilling tools to a remote oil production site. The flightcrew reported that shortly after takeoff the first officer noticed that the airplane's elevator control movements appeared to be "momentarily stiff."
While en route to the destination, the flight engineer was asked to inspect the cargo, and he subsequently discovered that two of the four, 31-foot long oil drilling tools had shifted aft, damaging the aft pressure bulkhead. The captain did not declare an emergency, and the airplane landed at the destination without incident.
A postflight inspection revealed substantial damage to the aft pressure bulkhead assembly, as well as various frames, stringers and structural longerons. In addition, several attachments for the elevator flight control pulleys and flight control cable guides were damaged. The operator noted that the airplane's pressurization system had been removed years ago, when the airplane was converted to a cargo configuration.
The operator reported that after loading the airplane, just before departure, the crew inspected the five nylon strapping mechanisms that secured the four drilling tools to the floor of the airplane. The crew reported that all five of the nylon straps were tight before departure, but gathered that one or more had loosened slightly during taxi and takeoff, allowing two of the tools to shift aft during takeoff. The crew also noted that the drilling tools were covered with ice and snow, which likely aided in the tools sliding along the aluminum, diamond plate-covered floor of the airplane.
Probable cause
A load shift during takeoff, which resulted in substantial damage to the aft bulkhead and associated structures.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC14CA012
- Event ID
- 20131220X70905
- Case number
- ANC14CA012
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: 651c17ef3e1e639aadef7e60cb4087be7c1867b40a3855101c57dbe429069e2b; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:12:00.067Z.