Alaska Airlines - Accidents and Incidents

Accidents and Incidents

Alaska Airlines has had ten major aviation accidents in its history, eight of which resulted in fatalities, with the other two resulting in the aircraft being written off but no fatalities.

• On November 30, 1947, an Alaska Airlines Douglas DC-4 (Registration NC91009), flying as Flight 009 with routing Anchorage-Yakutat-Port Hardy-Seattle, crash landed while attempting to make an ILS approach at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in Seattle. The plane went off the runway, rolled down an embankment, struck a ditch, and continued onto the intersection of Des Moines Highway and South 188th Street where it struck an automobile, catching fire and spilling gasoline all over the area. Of the 28 occupants on board, there were eight fatalities, plus the person driving in the car. The cause of the crash was attributed to pilot error.
• On January 20, 1949 Flight 8, a Douglas DC-3, was on routing Homer, Alaska-Kenai, Alaska when the plane struck the side of Ptarmigan Head 9 miles (14 km) east of the center of the airway to Kenai. Of the six passengers on board, there were five fatalities. The cause was determined to be the action of the pilot in straying off the designated airway.
• On August 8, 1954, a DC-3 operating the routing of McGrath, Alaska-Colorado Creek, Alaska crashed into the side of a mountain about 25 miles (40 km) northwest of McGrath. Both crew members perished.
• On March 2, 1957, an Alaska Airlines Douglas C-54B (Registration N90449) operating as Flight 100 routing Seattle-Fairbanks-Seattle "hit a mountain 3.8 miles (6.1 km) from Blyn while on approach to Seattle. All five occupants perished. The Captain intentionally entered an area of low overcast in mountainous terrain."
• On July 21, 1961, Alaska Airlines Flight 779, a DC-6A (Registration N6118C) operating Seattle-Shemya "crashed short of the runway due to the fact that the air traffic controller in the tower had forgotten to turn on the runway and approach lighting systems during a landing at night." All six on board were killed.
• On April 17, 1967, an Alaska Airlines Lockheed L-1049H Super Constellation with 28 passengers and 4 crew members aboard landed without landing gear down during heavy snowfall at Kotzebue Airport. Everyone on board survived but the aircraft was damaged beyond repair.
• On September 4, 1971, Alaska Airlines Flight 1866, a Boeing 727–193 operating Anchorage-Cordova-Yakutat-Juneau-Sitka, crashed into a mountain in the Chilkat Mountain Range about 18.5 miles (29.8 km) from the airport while on approach to Juneau. All seven crew members and 104 passengers were killed. The cause of the crash was determined to be misleading navigational information given to the flight, the failure of the crew to use all navigational aids and not performing the required audio identification of the navigational facilities.
• On April 5, 1976, Alaska Airlines Flight 60, a Boeing 727–81 (Registration N124AS) operating Juneau-Ketchikan, overran the runway while landing in Ketchikan after the Captain decided to attempt a go around at the last moment. One passenger died in the accident. The cause of the crash was determined to be pilot error for initiating a go-around after commitment to landing and the pilot's "unprofessional decision" to abandon the precision approach.
• On June 9, 1987, an Alaska Airlines Boeing 727-90C at Anchorage International Airport with two people on board struck a jetway while taxiing and caught fire, destroying the aircraft. The avionics technician on board the plane inadvertently deactivated the brake pressurization system.
• On January 31, 2000, Alaska Airlines Flight 261, an MD-83, plunged into the Pacific Ocean near Point Mugu, California while preparing to attempt an emergency landing at Los Angeles International Airport en route from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, to San Francisco and Seattle, killing all 88 people on board. In its final report, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determined the cause of the accident to be failure of acme nut threads which were part of the jackscrew assembly for the trim system on the horizontal stabilizer. The failure of these acme nut threads was the result of insufficient lubrication of the jackscrew assembly by Alaska Airlines which was the result of Alaska's extended lubrication and inspection intervals and from the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) approval of those intervals. NTSB also found that the lack of a fail-safe mechanism for the failure of the acme nut threads on the MD-80 design contributed to the accident. This incident, along with an earlier ValuJet crash, led to closer FAA oversight of airline maintenance operations. The accident was also the subject of episode 6, season 1, of the documentary series, Mayday.