Tourist floatplane crashes off Washington coast, all 11 survive

A Kenmore Air floatplane carrying 11 people crashed into the water near Sucia Island after departing Seattle’s Lake Union, yet every person aboard survived. The dramatic video showed the aircraft’s final moments off the Washington coast, but the key fact was that rescuers pulled all 11 people from the water.

Kenmore Air said the aircraft was a de Havilland DHC-3 Otter, Flight 140. It left Lake Union at about 4:30 p.m. Thursday and was bound for Roche Harbor on San Juan Island when it went down in Shallow Bay, also identified as North Beach Shallow Bay, in San Juan County at about 5:15 p.m. local time. The plane carried 10 passengers and a pilot.

The U.S. Coast Guard said the floatplane made an emergency landing before catching fire. Emergency crews reached the scene and all 11 people were accounted for. One person was reported critically injured, and several others were hospitalized after the crash.

The accident immediately sharpened attention on seaplane safety in western Washington, where floatplanes are a regular way to move between Seattle, the San Juan Islands and outlying waterfront communities. Those flights are part of the region’s transportation fabric, but the crashes that do occur tend to draw intense scrutiny because the aircraft operate low over water, often in changing wind and visibility conditions.

That scrutiny is not abstract. A floatplane crash near Whidbey Island on September 4, 2022, killed 10 people and later led to National Transportation Safety Board findings and calls for changes tied to the aircraft type involved. The latest wreck near Sucia Island will likely renew questions about oversight, emergency response and how well operators, regulators and rescue crews are prepared when a seaplane flight goes wrong in the islands.

For now, the outcome stands out for one reason: despite fire, water impact and a heavily loaded tourist flight, the entire group aboard made it out alive.