Pacific Coastal Airlines accident in Fish Egg Inlet

The Pacific Coastal Airlines accident in Fish Egg Inlet occurred on 17 September 1994 on a domestic scheduled Pacific Coastal Airlines flight within the Canadian province of British Columbia. Shortly after takeoff from Fish Egg Inlet, a float-equipped De Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter 100 crashed due to a mechanical failure. All three occupants of the aircraft were killed in the accident.

Accident sequence

The captain, the first officer and two passengers took off from the Fish Egg Inlet logging camp, a bay east of the offshore Calvert Island on the central coast of the province, on a 16-nautical-mile flight under visual flight rules (VFR) to Pruth Bay. This was the second leg of a flight that had started in Port Hardy. The first officer, who was sitting in the left pilot seat and had taken the controls, taxied the aircraft a short distance away from the dock and then carried out the takeoff run. The captain was sitting in the right pilot seat. When the aircraft reached a height of 100 feet and the high-lift devices were just being retracted, the aircraft pitched violently and stalled. The pilots were unable to regain control of the aircraft; it crashed into the water about 100 feet from the shore and sank immediately.

The captain, who had suffered serious injuries in the accident, was able to escape from the wreckage and swam ashore. The first officer and the two passengers remained in the aircraft and drowned. When the aircraft did not arrive in Pruth Bay, Pacific Coastal Airlines employees notified the rescue coordination centre and began their own search for the missing aircraft. A pilot of the search party spotted wreckage in the water near the logging camp at around 14:30 Pacific Daylight Time (PDT) that day. After landing to inspect the site more closely, he discovered the captain on the shore nearby and took him to the hospital in Port Hardy.