Reeve Aleutian Airways Flight 69 forced landing
Nihon YS-11A · Loss of thrust in both engines due to fuel trouble
From C · Anchorage, AK to C · COLD BAY, AK
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA82AA015
- 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
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- Occupants
- Unknown
- Survivors
- 39
- 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
- 0
- 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
Nihon YS-11A
- Aircraft type
- Nihon YS-11
- 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
- N169RV
- Operator
- Reeve Aleutian
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From C · Anchorage, AKTo C · COLD BAY, 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 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
- Approach
- First occurrenceThe 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
- Partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Fuel starvation
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Not plotted · Location withheld: coordinates are missing, conflicting, invalid, or have no accepted acquisition method. No substitute location has been invented.
From the Wikipedia article
The Reeve Aleutian Airways Flight 69 forced landing (Rību Aryūshan Kōkū fujichaku jiko) was an accident on 16 February 1982 in which Reeve Aleutian Airways Flight 69 (NAMC YS-11) made a forced landing in Alaska, United States.
Outline of the accident
On 16 February 1982, Reeve Aleutian Airways Flight 69, which had taken off from Anchorage International Airport, lost both engines due to fuel trouble just short of its destination, King Salmon Airport. It was forced to make a forced landing on a frozen river short of the airport. Although fire broke out from an engine on landing, the forced landing was successful. It was a rare accident in which the aircraft made a forced landing outside the airport grounds and yet all 39 passengers and crew were safe (some passengers suffered frostbite before being moved to the airport). The YS-11 left on the river was recovered before the ice melted and returned to service.
Cause of the accident
A small amount of water mixed into the fuel froze, and the resulting tiny ice fragments clogged filters in the fuel system, so fuel could no longer be delivered to the engines and they stopped. Normally heaters operate to prevent icing, but when they were switched off a few minutes before landing, the fuel froze all at once in the low-temperature environment of Alaska in winter.
Similar accidents
British Airways Flight 38 accident - On 17 January 2008, a British Airways Boeing 777 made a forced landing on grass short of the runway at Heathrow Airport. The cause was that the fuel had partially frozen due to the long flight, and this caused a blockage at the FOHE (fuel/oil heat exchanger). Because Flight 38 was hit by these symptoms just before landing, the pilots had no margin to take recovery action, and the aircraft was treated as a total loss/destroyed, but fortunately all 152 crew and passengers were safe.
TACA Flight 110 forced landing - 24 May 1988. A TACA Boeing 737 flying from Belize to New Orleans encountered a storm short of its destination, and both engines stopped after ingesting large amounts of rainwater and hail. The pilots spotted a grassy levee and attempted a landing. Like Flight 69, it is one of the examples in which a forced landing outside the airport grounds was attempted successfully after a loss of thrust in both engines. Since the aircraft began to sink under its own weight some time after the forced landing, the accident aircraft had both engines repaired or replaced, took off from the levee, and returned to service after undergoing thorough repairs at New Orleans International Airport.
Translated into English with AI assistance from the Japanese Wikipedia article “リーブ・アリューシャン航空69便不時着事故” (revision 108819711, retrieved 2026-09-19) by its authors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Extracted as plain text: references, tables, images and some sections are left out; the translation may contain errors, and long articles were cut to their first 700 words. Read the article
NTSB narrative
THE ACFT WAS ON A SCHEDULED FLT FROM ANCHORAGE TO COLD BAY, AK WITH INTERMEDIATE STOPS AT KING SALMON & DUTCH HARBOR, AK. EN ROUTE BETWEEN ANCHORAGE & KING SALMON, THE AIR TEMPS AT CRUISE ALTITUDE WERE BETWEEN -36 & -40 DEG FAHRENHEIT. WHILE ENTERING DONWND TO LND AT KING SALMON, THE BEFORE-LNDG CHECK WAS MADE WHICH INCLUDED TURNING OFF THE FUEL HEATERS.SHORTLY THEREAFTER, THE R ENGINE LOST PWR & WOULD NOT RESTART. THE R ENGINE WAS FEATHERED & SECURED. SOON AFTER THAT, WHILE TURNING TO FINAL APCH WITH THE GEAR DOWN, THE L ENGINE BEGAN LOSING PWR. THE CAPTAIN ELECTED TO LAND ON A FRZN RIVER & CALLED FOR THE GEAR TO BE RETRACTED. WHILE LNDG, THE ACFT TOUCHED DOWN BEFORE THE GEAR WAS FULLY RETRACTED. AN INVESTIGATION REVEALED ALL 3 TURBINE STAGES OF THE L ENGINE WERE DAMAGED FROM OVERHEATING, INDICATIVE TO EXCESS FUEL FLOW. EXCEPT FOR THE L ENGINE OVERHEATING, NO OTHER MECHANICAL DEFECTS WERE FOUND WITH EITHER ENGINE. HOWEVER, ENTRAINEDWATER (WTR IN SOLUTION) CAN OCCUR IN JET FUEL. WATER (29 TO 150 PPM) WAS FOUND IN FUEL SAMPLES. CONDS FOR ICE, PRESENT.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
Japanese Wikipedia article: リーブ・アリューシャン航空69便不時着事故
- Article
- リーブ・アリューシャン航空69便不時着事故
- Translation
- Into English with AI assistance; names of linked operators and aircraft types from Wikidata. It may contain errors.
- Revision
- 108819711 · 2026-03-19 · retrieved 2026-09-19
- Wikidata
- Q11348806
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record DCA82AA015
- Event ID
- 20020917X01911
- Case number
- DCA82AA015
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Where each value comes from
- Record
- ja Wikipedia article "リーブ・アリューシャン航空69便不時着事故" (page 2191915, revision 108819711), translated into English with AI assistance; merged with NTSB case DCA82AA015 (events / aircraft)
- Date
- NTSB record DCA82AA015: NTSB API eventDate, eventTimeUtc and eventTimeUtcOffsetHours (local date)
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from NTSB record DCA82AA015
- Map position
- NTSB record DCA82AA015: events decimal coordinates
- Aircraft, operator and route
- NTSB record DCA82AA015: 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 DCA82AA015: operated under Part 121: Air Carrier
- Fatalities
- NTSB record DCA82AA015: NTSB API totalFatal
- Ground fatalities
- NTSB record DCA82AA015: NTSB API ongroundFatal
- Summary
- Wikipedia article lead
Source notes (3)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "Reeve Aleutian Airways Flight 69 forced landing" and NTSB case DCA82AA015, 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.