The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) will travel to Anchorage, Alaska, for a hearing on the crash of Ravn Connect Flight 3153 in October 2016. Flight 3153 was a Cessna Caravan traveling from Quinhagak to Togiak carrying one passenger and two pilots that impacted rocky terrain near Togiak killing all aboard. This is the first NTSB hearing held outside Washington, D.C., in over 20 years. “The NTSB is conducting this investigative hearing in Alaska because the majority of witnesses we want to hear from are in Alaska,” said NTSB board member Earl F. Weener. “We also believe that holding the hearing in Alaska will help increase awareness within the Alaskan aviation community of the issues surrounding controlled flight into terrain accidents and flight into instrument meteorological conditions,” says Weener.
The NTSB plans to gather evidence about the pilot training and operational control at Hageland Aviation—the operator of Ravn Connect service—and its owner HoTH Inc. Hageland Aviation Services aircraft have been involved in six accidents since 2013, four involving controlled flight into terrain and one involving VFR flight into IMC. A former Hageland-owned airline, Era Alaska, was the subject of the reality television show Flying Wild Alaska, which aired on the Discovery Channel in 2011 and 2012.
The hearing is open to the public and is scheduled to begin at 8 a.m. on Aug. 17 in the Mid-Deck Ballroom of the Captain Cook Hotel, 939 W. 5th Ave., Anchorage, Alaska.
