Everts Air McDonnell Douglas DC 9 33F accident
McDonnell Douglas DC 9 33F · Accident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) during initial climb
From Bethel Airport (PABE) to Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (PANC)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA18CA056
- 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
McDonnell Douglas DC 9 33F
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas DC-9
- 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
- N935CE
- Operator
- Everts Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bethel Airport (PABE), Bethel, AKTo Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (PANC), Anchorage, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 48 years (built 1969)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- System/component malfunction/failure (non-power)
- 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 structures
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On December 23, 2017 at 1221 Alaska Standard Time (AkST) a Boeing/McDonnell-Douglas DC-9, registration N935CE, experienced a depressurization on initial climb from the Bethel, Alaska, airport (PABE.) The flight crew returned to Bethel and landed with no further incident. There were no injuries to the two flight crew and one cargo handler on board. The depressurization resulted from a pallet jack in the cargo compartment impacting the rear pressure bulkhead, resulting in substantial damage to the airplane. Inspection revealed a tie-down fastener for the pallet jack had pulled out.
Probable cause
failure of a cargo tie-down fastener, resulting in unsecured cargo striking the pressure bulkhead.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA18CA056
- Event ID
- 20171226X41907
- Case number
- DCA18CA056
- 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, 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: 18c416ef800fef05d1f1902f41f07f1f3eff9fcff235348683134c14a122e2a8; retrieved 2026-09-16T06:14:22.851Z.