NTSB Calls For Alaska Air Tour Special FAR
AK – Since 2007, Ketchikan has seen a string of fatal air tour accidents. During that period, there were seven air tour crashes in which 31 people were killed and 13 seriously injured. As a result, new rules and regulations are needed to implement procedures that will be more effective in improving safety, something the NTSB said was much needed. “There have been too many air tour tragedies in Ketchikan, a place with unique—but well-understood—safety hazards that endanger the lives of pilots and passengers alike,” said NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy. “Unless the FAA acts swiftly, experience tells us to expect even more heartbreak and preventable loss of life.”
On Wednesday, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) published a letter urging the FAA to develop and implement new airspace regulations for Ketchikan, Alaska, a popular air tour area. According to the NTSB release, the proposed framework of regulations would be “…specific to Ketchikan to require more conservative flight visibility minimums and enhanced weather training for air tour pilots flying there.”
The NTSB panned the current safety plan, saying, “…the FAA’s response to many of its recommendations involved voluntary operator actions that are no longer in effect or that had proven ineffective at mitigating the ‘overlapping hazards’ presented by a rapidly changing weather environment and mountainous terrain. Both are often factors in fatal air tour crashes in Ketchikan.”
In its report, the NTSB discussed the most recent fatal air taxi (Part 135) accident in August of 2021. On August 5, 2021, a De Havilland DHC-2 airplane, N1249K, operated as a Part 135 air tour, impacted heavily wooded, mountainous terrain near Ketchikan. The pilot and five passengers were fatally injured, and the airplane was destroyed. A review of weather camera imagery, forecasts, weather observations, and passenger photographs revealed that while the pilot was conducting the flight under visual flight rules (VFR), the airplane entered a narrow valley and encountered deteriorating weather.