Pacific Airways De Havilland DHC-2 accident
De Havilland DHC-2 · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Ketchikan International Airport (KTN) to Ketchikan Harbor Seaplane Base (5KE)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC19LA028
- 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
De Havilland DHC-2
- Aircraft type
- de Havilland DHC-2
- 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
- N94DC
- Operator
- Pacific Airways
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ketchikan International Airport (KTN), Ketchikan, AKTo Ketchikan Harbor Seaplane Base (5KE), Ketchikan, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 68 years (built 1951)
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Loss of control on ground
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, upon touchdown in the float-equipped airplane, the seaplane skipped, and the right float dug into the water. A video recorded by a cruise ship passenger captured the accident sequence and revealed that the airplane was landing parallel to an ocean swell and touched down in a relatively flat pitch attitude. After touchdown and encountering the swell, the airplane veered to the left, water looped, nosed down, and began to submerge. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the left wing, left lift strut, and fuselage. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
A loss of directional control while landing, which resulted in a water loop.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC19LA028
- Event ID
- 20190628X14311
- Case number
- ANC19LA028
- 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: 5387a4587c84345e604c2bb2cee1e5371a9a0df03f10d2ed8b6926f610684f36; retrieved 2026-09-16T09:19:54.266Z.