2010 Alaska DHC-3 crash
General Communication Corporation (GCI) de Havilland DHC-3 · Controlled flight into terrain in low visibility due to pilot error
From Aleknagik, AK to Dillingham, AK
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC10MA068
- 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
- Event fatalities
- 5 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- Occupants
- 9
- Survivors
- 4
- InjuriesFatal: death within 30 days. Serious: over 48 hours in hospital within a week, most broken bones, severe bleeding, nerve or organ damage, or serious burns. Minor: anything less. Glossary
- 4
- 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
- General aviation
- 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-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
- N455A
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Possible conflict
- From Aleknagik, AKTo Dillingham, AK
- 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 91: General Aviation
- 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
- En route
- 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
- Controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT)
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
- Personnel issues › Physical
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
From the Wikipedia article
On August 9, 2010, a privately operated de Havilland Canada DHC-3 Otter amphibious floatplane crashed near Aleknagik, Alaska, killing five of the nine people on board. The fatalities included former U.S. Senator Ted Stevens, while the survivors included former Administrator of NASA and then-CEO of EADS North America Sean O'Keefe, his son, and future Deputy Administrator of NASA James Morhard.
The aircraft, a single-engine de Havilland Canada DHC-3 Otter registered to GCI, crashed on a mountainside while on a flight between two fishing lodges. Stevens and O'Keefe had been on a fishing trip. The wreckage was quickly located after an aerial search, but rescue efforts were hampered by poor weather.
Accident
The floatplane crashed at around 2:30 p.m. Alaska Daylight Time (UTC-8), 10 mi northwest of Aleknagik. After it was reported that the aircraft had not landed as scheduled, other pilots launched a search and located the wreckage on a 40-degree slope in the mountainous Dillingham region. The flight was being conducted under visual flight rules and was not monitored by radar at the time of the accident, since there is no such coverage in the area under 4000 feet. Other pilots who had flown in the same area during the course of the day described weather conditions in the region as "very bad" with visibility at times being less than 1 mi.
Investigation and cause
Investigation
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) sent a team to the site of the accident to investigate the cause of the crash. The team returned an inconclusive report in May 2011. They speculated that the pilot, a recovered stroke victim, may have fallen asleep or had a seizure, but there was no direct evidence to support these theories. The report was critical of the Federal Aviation Administration's re-certification process, stating:The Federal Aviation Administration's internal guidance for medical certification of pilots following stroke is inadequate because it is conflicting and unclear, does not specifically address the risk of recurrence associated with such an event, and does not specifically recommend a neuropsychological evaluation (formal cognitive testing) to evaluate potential subtle cognitive impairment.
The report went on to note that the airplane was equipped with a Terrain Awareness and Warning System, but that the pilot had elected to fly with the system turned off. Because much of Alaska's terrain is highly variable, bush pilots will often de-activate the system, as it issues many false warnings.
Text from the Wikipedia article “2010 Alaska DHC-3 crash” (revision 1366439117, retrieved 2026-09-18) by its authors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Extracted as plain text: references, tables, images and some sections are left out. Read the article
NTSB narrative
The Safety Board’s full report is available at http://www.ntsb.gov/publictn/A_Acc1.htm. The Aircraft Accident Report number is NTSB/AAR-11/03.
On August 9, 2010, about 1442 Alaska daylight time, a single-engine, turbine powered, amphibious float-equipped de Havilland DHC-3T airplane, N455A, impacted mountainous, tree-covered terrain about 10 nautical miles (nm) northeast of Aleknagik, Alaska. The airline transport pilot and four passengers received fatal injuries, and four passengers received serious injuries. The airplane sustained substantial damage, including deformation and breaching of the fuselage. The flight was operated by GCI Communication Corp. (GCI), of Anchorage, Alaska, under the provisions of 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91. About the time of the accident, meteorological conditions that met the criteria for marginal visual flight rules were reported at Dillingham Airport, Dillingham, Alaska, about 18 nm south of the accident site. No flight plan was filed. The flight departed about 1427 from a GCI-owned private lodge on the shore of Lake Nerka and was en route to a remote sport fishing camp about 52 nm southeast on the Nushagak River.
Probable cause
The pilot's temporary unresponsiveness for reasons that could not be established from the available information. Contributing to the investigation's inability to determine exactly what occurred in the final minutes of the flight was the lack of a cockpit recorder system with the ability to capture audio, images, and parametric data.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
Wikipedia article: 2010 Alaska DHC-3 crash
- Article
- 2010 Alaska DHC-3 crash
- Revision
- 1366439117 · 2026-07-28 · retrieved 2026-09-18
- Wikidata
- Q4616572
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record ANC10MA068
- Event ID
- 20100810X62027
- Case number
- ANC10MA068
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Where each value comes from
- Record
- Wikipedia article "2010 Alaska DHC-3 crash" (page 28322002, revision 1366439117); merged with NTSB case ANC10MA068 (events / aircraft)
- Date
- NTSB record ANC10MA068: NTSB narrative opening date, consistent with the API date and time (local date)
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from Wikidata (P17); country from NTSB record ANC10MA068
- Map position
- NTSB record ANC10MA068: events decimal coordinates
- Aircraft, operator and route
- NTSB record ANC10MA068: aircraft; gaps from Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports)
- Operation
- NTSB record ANC10MA068: operated under Part 91: General Aviation
- Fatalities
- NTSB record ANC10MA068: NTSB API totalFatal
- Ground fatalities
- NTSB record ANC10MA068: events.inj_f_grnd
- Summary
- Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (3)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "2010 Alaska DHC-3 crash" and NTSB case ANC10MA068, matched by the same aircraft registration and date. For this US event the NTSB's values are used where the two differ; each value names its source.
- 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.