Kenmore Air said the pilot in a fiery emergency landing in the San Juan Islands on Thursday adjusted the flight path due to poor weather ahead of the incident. It is not yet clear if the weather prompted the emergency landing or caused the plane to ultimately crash.
Friday afternoon, Kenmore Air kept its planes grounded as other float planes continued to land and take off from Lake Union.
“It’s a safety matter,” John Nance, an aviation analyst, said. “Any time something like this happens, you want to take a beat and decide, is there any chance we are missing something that needs to be applied to the rest of the fleet?”
The plane that crashed Thursday evening was a de Havilland Otter - a model that has not been produced since 1967. However, Nance told KIRO 7 the plane’s age likely did not factor into the crash. In fact, he said he believes the plane’s ruggedness may have played a role in everyone on board surviving.
“There is really no limit as long as maintenance is done correctly, and that is certainly the case with a de Havilland airplane because of its roughness and resiliency,” he said.
According to Kenmore Air, the plane was up to date on its inspections at the time of the crash.
KIRO 7 obtained hundreds of pages of documents from the Federal Aviation Administration, outlining the plane’s import from Canada in 2016 and all major repairs and modifications since.
Nance described one major modification that Kenmore Air did to set their planes apart: “They have taken the piston engine off and put on a very reliable turbine engine.”
Nance told KIRO 7 the National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the crash and will likely release its findings in the next month.
“The video that we have seems to show there may have been a sudden tailwind or sudden turbulence that was directly attributed to the storm,” Nance said.
Kenmore Air said flights will resume Saturday.
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