Investigation of Misty Fjords National Monument Air-tour-route Accident
On July 24, 2007, a Taquan Air tour flight, operating a float-equipped deHavilland DHC-2 Beaver (N995WA) and carrying the pilot and four passengers from a cruise ship, impacted mountainous terrain with no survivors. An estimate is that in 2007, 900,000 cruise-ship tourists visited Ketchikan. At the time of this accident, Taquan had commitments regarding sightseeing with each of the cruise lines serving Ketchikan. According to the AP, the cruise line that had booked the tourists severed ties with Taquan after the accident for the remainder of 2007.
The National Transportation Safety Board investigated the accident and issued a report on July 31, 2008, finding that the primary cause of the crash was pilot misjudgment, but that inadequate supervision of the flight tour industry in southeast Alaska by the Federal Aviation Administration also contributed to the event. The Board issued four recommendations. The first of these four recommendations, A-08-59, was to install weather cameras on the air tour routes within the Misty Fjords National Monument. Recommendation A-08-60 was to establish monthly ground and en route inspections of air tour flights to observe and enforce safe flying practices. Recommendation A-08-61 was to develop cue-based training for commercial air tour pilots in responding to changing local weather conditions. A-08-62 first needed the completion of A-08-61, and recommended that pilots be required to take the training.
Initial plans were to install 139 weather cameras in Alaska by 2014.
Read more about this topic: Taquan Air
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