Seaplanes have been a part of Seattle’s fabric since the first Boeing airplane took off from Lake Union in 1916. Today they provide regular shuttle and tour service throughout the Pacific Northwest from Seattle to the San Juan Islands, Alaska and the British Isles Colombia. The trajectory of Sunday’s flight — a normal takeoff and climb without significant weather and about 18 minutes of routine flight before a sudden, sharp dive into the sea without a distress call — is, for now, inexplicable and deeply troubling. Colleen Mondor, a writer who specializes in investigating plane crashes in Alaska involving similar aircraft, said that this flight plan before such a catastrophic end is very strange. “That sure sounds like a stable,” Mondor said. “It’s strange to be 18 minutes into a flight and all of a sudden you’re behaving this way with the aircraft.” The plane was a De Havilland Canada DHC-3 Otter turboprop operated by Renton-based Friday Harbor Seaplanes. Although this type of aircraft has suffered numerous accidents in Alaska over seven decades of service, these have almost exclusively been linked to bad pilot decisions in rough terrain and bad weather. The aircraft is considered safe. “They are older. But they are really good planes,” Mondor said. “They’ve flown for a long time for good reason. They don’t fall from the sky.” Jay Todhunter, chief pilot for Kenmore Air, which operates a much larger floatplane operation than Friday Harbor Seaplanes, described the Otter as “a great plane to fly.” “We all love it. It’s perfect for what we use it for. It’s a pretty tame plane, mostly easy to fly,” he said. Todhunter said the pilots in the two companies know each other. At times he had shared casual conversations on the dock at Friday Harbor with Jason Winters, the pilot of Sunday’s fateful flight. “There’s kind of a community within the pilot group here,” Todhunter said. “It’s a tragedy and it’s in all of our thoughts right now.”

An icon of Pacific Northwest aviation

Seaplane flights in Seattle usually delight first-time passengers as they look with fresh eyes from the air at the area’s majestic scenery of mountains, lakes and oceans. Kenmore Air flies from both Lake Union and a seaplane base in Kenmore at the north end of Lake Washington. Vancouver-based Harbor Air, B.C. and charter company Seattle Seaplanes also fly in and out of Lake Union, while Friday Harbor Seaplanes operates from a base on the south end of Lake Washington in Renton. These passenger and tourist seaplanes are only allowed to fly during daytime, clear weather conditions. They cannot take off unless the cloud ceiling is above 1,000 feet with visibility at least two miles ahead. Fog means canceled flights. Winter flights are limited. The most popular destinations include Friday Harbor, Orcas Island, Victoria, Vancouver and Desolation Sound in the northern part of the Strait of Georgia.
Many of the flyers are islanders commuting to Seattle and destinations beyond. Additionally, air charter company Seattle Scenics offers seaplane sightseeing flights from Lake Washington to Renton and Kirkland. And there are thousands of takeoffs and landings made by private non-commercial floatplanes in this area every month. Not all tourists and commuters are on these flights. Floatplanes transport professionals of all descriptions to and from the islands, including whale biologists, doctors, architects, lawyers, boat technicians and IT specialists. Planes regularly carry perishable food to island restaurants and, when ferries are down, essential supplies. The more than 100-year history of floatplanes here affects those who work in the business. Once flying captures the imagination, it tends to be passed down from generation to generation. Todd Banks, president of Kenmore Air, has been in the airline industry for 31 years. His grandfather, Bob Munro, started operating seaplanes on Lake Washington and Lake Union in 1946. “Seaplanes are a vital part of the transportation system in the Northwest … to access some of the most beautiful places in the world,” Banks said. “It was a privilege to be a part of it.” The 10-passenger DHC-3 Otter is an old horse of this system. It was first built in the 1950s and a total of 466 were built until 1967. Almost everyone flying today has upgraded from piston to more powerful turbine engines. The Otter is a familiar sight even to Seattle residents who have never flown one. Kenmore uses it, along with a smaller six-passenger model called the DHC-2 Beaver, on the scenic flights that take off from Lake Union and crest the downtown skyscrapers as they fly out. Weighing just under the 12,500-pound limit above which regulations require a two-person cockpit crew, it’s one of the largest planes that can be flown by a single pilot.

    Seaplane crash on Whidbey Island

The FAA aircraft registry shows Northwest Seaplanes, the parent company of Friday Harbor Seaplanes, with only one DHC-3 Otter in its fleet — the one that crashed — along with four DHC-2 Beavers.
Kenmore Air has a current aircraft fleet of 10 Otters and seven Beavers. The air navigation site used by pilots shows an average of 119 seaplane landings or takeoffs per day from Kenmore’s Lake Union base and 118 per day at its Lake Washington base in 2019. About a fifth of those are private seaplane operations without commercial passengers. The same website shows that the Lake Washington seaplane base in Renton used by Friday Harbor Seaplanes averaged 46 takeoffs or landings per week in 2020, down a year due to the pandemic.

Most of the previous accidents happened in the desert

The Otter’s ability to take off on short notice and climb quickly, which makes it ideal for Lake Union, also means it’s “one of the best airplanes ever built,” said David Gudgel, Kenmore’s chief operating officer. , referring to planes that can land and take off in the Alaskan wilderness. There, the plane is used by many small operators for adventure operations that account for the majority of Otter accidents. “They go up rivers and lakes and fly through mountains,” Gudgel said. “A lot of these (accidents) I think you’ll find are pilot error.” The Geneva-based Air Accidents Archives has compiled a comprehensive database that stretches back 54 years to 1963 and shows 52 fatal DHC-3 Otter crashes, including Sunday’s. Of these, 21 were military aircraft. The US military lost some in Vietnam. Another eight were wheeled versions for land use or equipped with skis for snow landings. Of the 23 fatal civil plane crashes reported, 19 were in North America and resulted in 70 deaths. The cause in many cases was attributed to the pilot’s choice to fly in bad weather. A few other accidents were caused by the pilot’s failure to balance the load in the cargo bay before takeoff, shifting the plane’s center of gravity. Mondor said the vast majority of those accidents in Alaska were “very specific to the pilots’ decision-making about load or weather decisions and not about the airplane.” These accidents occurred in an environment far more hostile than the scheduled and chartered commuter services operating out of Seattle. “We don’t deal with the terrain and the weather they face up there. It’s very different,” Kenmore’s Todhunter said. The Swiss database shows no previous accidents for Friday Harbor Seaplanes or its parent company, Northwest Seaplanes. Kenmore suffered a fatal accident in October 1977 when seven people died flying over Stevens Pass in a DHC-2 Beaver. The investigation report found that the pilot had not balanced the aircraft’s load and had made “inappropriate in-flight decisions” by flying too low. Over the next 45 years, Kenmore had no deaths. Analysis of previous DHC-3 Otter accidents leaves Sunday’s crash shocking. The flight path was simple. The pilot was experienced. Although it was a bit windy, there was nothing alarming about the weather. Chuck Perry, who has been a pilot for more than 36 years and was Kenmore’s chief pilot before Todhunter, said the Otter is a heavy, stable plane in high winds. The plane was full on Sunday, but if the load was unbalanced, it should have been clear on takeoff. In addition to examining the wreckage after its recovery, investigators will examine the plane’s maintenance records, looking for any possible mechanical anomalies. Northwest Seaplanes deferred questions to National Transportation Safety Board investigators.

A stressful moment

The entire aviation community has gone through a financial crisis that forced layoffs during the pandemic-induced downturn in air travel. This has emphasized airplane operations everywhere from Boeing to major airlines to aircraft repair and overhaul shops. The Bureau of Transportation Statistics, which provides data on scheduled passenger routes, though not similar data on charter flights, shows that Friday Harbor seaplanes carried nearly 3,400 passengers before COVID 2019, but just half that number in 2020. However, business rebounded in 2021, with more than 5,500 passengers carried. Kenmore’s Banks said that in this “very small, niche segment of aviation” he knows Shane Carlson, who runs Northwest Seaplanes, founded by his father, Clyde Carlson, quite well. “They’re doing a good job,” Banks said of his smaller competitor. He texted Shane on the Sunday after the accident to offer his condolences. “It’s a tragedy,” Banks said. “It’s a difficult time for us right now.” Banks said he understands if people are…