Kenmore Air Harbor de Havilland DHC-3 accident
de Havilland DHC-3 · Accident: ground collision during landing
From Kenmore Air Harbor Seaplane Base (W55) to Tristan Heliport (WA03)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's damage. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR26LA274
- 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
- Ongoing
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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
- Not recorded
de Havilland DHC-3
- Aircraft type
- de Havilland DHC-3
- 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
- N709KA
- Operator
- Kenmore Air Harbor
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kenmore Air Harbor Seaplane Base (W55), Seattle, WATo Tristan Heliport (WA03), Roche Harbor, WA
- Aircraft age
- About 66 years (built 1960)
- 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
- Ground collision
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed Possible conflict
Cause areas
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On July 23, 2026, about 1720 Pacific daylight time, a De Havilland DHC-3 Otter airplane, N709KA, was substantially damaged when it was involved in an accident near Eastsound, Washington. The pilot and two passengers were seriously injured, and eight passengers sustained minor injuries. The airplane was operated as a Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 135 scheduled air taxi flight. According to the operator, the flight originated from Kenmore Sea Base (W55), Seattle, Washington at 1630 with scheduled stops at Roche Harbor (WA03), Roche Harbor, Washington and Friday Harbor (W33), Friday Harbor, Washington. Preliminary ADS-B data showed that the airplane departed W55 about 1633 and maintained about 500 to 1,000 ft mean sea level (msl). The airplane remained over the water and generally travelled north over Rosario Strait. Once northwest of Lummi Island, the airplane turned west and passed north of Sucia Island. The operator stated that the pilot radioed the company operations center and reported inclement weather, which precluded the flight from continuing to WA03. The pilot informed the operator that he would return to Sucia Island, land, and wait for the weather to improve. The operator reported that there were multiple bays around Sucia Island where the pilot was authorized to land. ADS-B data showed that about 1619, when the airplane was about 11 miles northeast of WA03, it turned right about 180° and flew about 5 miles towards Sucia Island. Video imagery, from a witness who was near Shallow Bay, Sucia Island, showed the airplane at a low altitude and a nose-high attitude descending towards the water. When the airplane was about 4 ft above the water, the left wing dropped and the left wingtip and left pontoon float impacted the water. The airplane then landed with both pontoon floats on the water and continued forward where it subsequently impacted rocks. A passenger on the airplane reported that multiple small boats immediately arrived to remove the passengers from the accident site. A postaccident fire destroyed the fuselage after all passengers and the pilot had exited. The airplane was recovered to a secure hanger for further examination.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR26LA274
- Event ID
- 20260724203453
- Case number
- WPR26LA274
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2026-07-24.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 5be4bdbd2349b27777195197e2d6a54cba378759c25168f40fb6fe05cb97eeb7; retrieved 2026-09-17T05:20:21.615Z.