When we arrived in Ketchikan on Tuesday, June 23, 2015, it was a beautiful day so we decided to book a seaplane excursion of the Misty Fjords. We ended up at Taquan Air and everyone was friendly and they showed us a safety video and told us that Taquan Air had a 100% safety rating. This eased my nerves. Due to the company overbooking, our group of 7 people had to go on the Cessna Caravan, a very nice plane, a little bigger than the DeHavilland Beaver (my husband was disappointed we didn't fly the Beaver but loved the Caravan), and our pilot, Kevin, was wonderful and gave us an amazing tour of the Misty Fjords and landed on a beautiful lake where we were able to get out on the pontoons. This excursion was a highlight of our trip to Alaska until two days later when we heard about the tragic crash of a seaplane doing the exact same excursion where all 9 people on board perished. I reassured myself that Taquan Air had a better safety record than ProMech Air, until I came across the below article.
The article made me feel betrayed by Taquan Air, and stupid for not doing more of my own research. The Cruise Lines and the tour companies seem to be too driven by profits that they may not cancel flights when necessary due to bad weather and are enticed into telling customers lies about their safety records so people won't back out of excursions. I still would've taken the flight had Taquan told me about the 2007 incident, but now I'll never fly with them again.
I'm giving a rating of 3 (wish it could be 2 1/2) because the Pilot, Kevin, was amazing and he seemed like an excellent pilot and made everyone feel very comfortable and deserves 5 stars, but the companies dishonestly about the crash in 2007 deserves ZERO stars.
Alaska News
As Southeast Alaska plane crash victims' life stories emerge, so do echoes of 2007 accident
Nathaniel Herz
June 27, 2015
He cited the 2007 crash that also happened during a tour of Misty Fjords, which an NTSB report a year later blamed on pilot error and inadequate supervision of the Southeast Alaska tour industry by the Federal Aviation Administration. Subsequent recommendations by the NTSB included the installation of webcams in the area and special weather training for tour pilots.
2007 Misty Fjords crash
Weather in Ketchikan the day of the crash was unsettled, with scattered showers and wind gusts hitting 26 mph.
“Equally impressive are the flight challenges posed by such dramatic terrain and volatile weather conditions,” the filing said.
In the 2007 crash, Ketchikan’s Taquan Air Service had sent three planes on Misty Fjords flight tours.
All three planes were flying through a shallow mountain pass known as “the cut.” The first plane made it through and the third plane’s pilot turned around and took a different route after running into what he described as a “wall of weather” — rain, fog and low clouds — according to news reports.
The second plane, a de Havilland Beaver, crashed in a box canyon and slid 250 feet down an embankment. All five people aboard were killed.
The pilot, 56-year-old Joseph Campbell, had 25 years of commercial aviation experience, but only seven hours of flying experience in Alaska when he was hired by Taquan to fly that summer.