Single Otters over represented in fatal accidents?

[Independence]

Is it just me or are single Otters being crashed at an abnormally high rate over the last 5-10 years? With only 460 or so built how many are still flying? I don't really have anything of value to add except a few suspicions so I'm looking for comments from experienced Otter pilots or engineers.
I'm not trying to rake muck.....I knew a couple of pilots who have died in Otter crashes.

[frozen solid]

I don't really think so, personally. I've had a friend die in one, and one that I used to fly has since been written off, thankfully without loss of life, but you have to remember, they are hard-working aeroplanes working in a pretty rough-and-tumble environment. Some of them are cream-puffs that only fly to tourist lodges in the summer, and some are operated under pretty strict conditions hauling passengers, (still more challenging an environment than mainstream aviation), and others are still doing what they've always done: ad-hoc charters to out-of-the-way places in sparsely settled areas, in and out of unprepared landing surfaces. This type of aviation has higher inherent risk no matter how many orange vests you make the pilots wear. I'd be more inclined to look at the accident rates for this type compared to helicopters or crop-dusters, rather than compared to mainstream commercial aviation. Also they are operated VFR, and most of them don't have any more instruments than a Cessna 120. Nevertheless they tend to be heavily utilized and right or wrong, we have all, regardless of the type involved, noticed that weather plays a larger role in accidents involving small charter operators than it does in IFR-style runway-to-runway operations.

Generally they are a big, friendly aeroplane that is easy enough to fly and, barring the obvious issues with the few remaining radial powerplants in the fleet, quite reliable and strongly built. I think if you're noticing lots of accidents, it's just that they are being flown hard in challenging situations, in an environment where the pilots do not get the same kind of support and infrastructure that their colleagues on other types in other environments take for granted.

[GUMPS]

I'd have to sit here and think for awhile trying to count how many people I know who have died in a Beaver or an Otter. BUT I'll hop in either one and fly it any day as long as I feel confident with who does the work on her. Actually I prefer it over anything that is a "substitute." (208, 185, 208, Found) I'm in the Otter almost everyday and have very few complaints about it. I'm curious to know what the original posters "suspicions" are though...

[oldtimer]

I think, like frozen solid said, it is simply exposure to risk that can be part of the answer.
Just like taxi cabs have more fender benders than the average motorist. Not because of bad drivers, it is just more exposure, often in all kinds of weather.
Also, the insurance industry will tell you that foatplanes are a higher risk than the "normal" airport to airport operations. I think.

[CID]

Otters certainly are overrepresented in accident reports. It has little to do with the design or operating conditions and more to do with attitude or the overall "culture" of air taxi operators and float operators in particular.

Consider the fact that the operating rules are supposed to limit these airplanes to day VFR but many are lost due to weather. Yes, an Otter pilot will perform more take offs and landings in a day then a typical airline pilot and one would think that along with less operating infrastructure equates to higher risk exposure but consider how simple the thing is to operate and the speeds and weather they (are supposed to) operate in.

[TheRealOtter]

Otters certainly are overrepresented in accident reports. It has little to do with the design or operating conditions and more to do with attitude or the overall "culture" of air taxi operators and float operators in particular.

Consider the fact that the operating rules are supposed to limit these airplanes to day VFR but many are lost due to weather. Yes, an Otter pilot will perform more take offs and landings in a day then a typical airline pilot and one would think that along with less operating infrastructure equates to higher risk exposure but consider how simple the thing is to operate and the speeds and weather they (are supposed to) operate in.

Gently disagree.
While company culture of course plays a very large roll in many accidents the overall culture of air taxi operators is not black and white, it is grey. There are good, there are bad, and there are many. Some have good cultures, some have bad. What is often constant with an otter is they do high performance, high risk work, were sometimes the margin for error is low or non-existent. You can try to regulate out the risk if you would like, but then how is mr. millionaire going to get to that perfect fishing hole that no one else can get to, or mr northerner get their pop and chips?

As for the second part: you honestly believe that the fact that dehavilland builds a good plane that is admittedly somewhat simple in design eliminates the increased risk from lack of infrastructure? Or something about weather they are supposed to operate in, in comparison with airliner pilots? I don't think that comparison is very, well, comparable. But lets take it as it is, running thru the mountains at VFR minimums is legal, and safe. But is definitely higher risk than your airliner sitting at 32,000feet with nothing but blue sky above. As for the speed of the otter, again bringing it back to your airliner pilot comparison, its slower, so you sit in the perfectly legal ice for longer. And while ice may be legal and safe for the most part it is an additional factor to add when something else goes sideways, that's where that funny smelling cheese model comes back into play. While your airliner is again at 32,000feet with nothing but blue around them and clean wings...

Otters definitely get tasked with more risky work, and it has to do with the mission they fill. After all, if you didn't need an otter to do the work, you would've gotten something else (maybe something faster, with better economy!). You can add common sense and good practice, to increase safety. And you can add regulation and bureaucracy to make it LOOK like increased safety. But ultimately, a small capable aircraft being asked to fly higher difficulty missions, in remote and underserviced areas, with little to no weather information, onto short lakes or shorter strips day after day after day is going to have a few more bends then a shiny new airbus doing a cattle run that carries almost no risk at all.

[shimmydampner]

consider how simple the thing is to operate and the speeds and weather they (are supposed to) operate in.

Yeah, bush flying is so easy it's a wonder there are any incidents at all.

[SuperDave]

Otters certainly are overrepresented in accident reports. It has little to do with the design or operating conditions and more to do with attitude or the overall "culture" of air taxi operators and float operators in particular.

Consider the fact that the operating rules are supposed to limit these airplanes to day VFR but many are lost due to weather. Yes, an Otter pilot will perform more take offs and landings in a day then a typical airline pilot and one would think that along with less operating infrastructure equates to higher risk exposure but consider how simple the thing is to operate and the speeds and weather they (are supposed to) operate in.

Hey CID,

Having flown Otters a little bit, I'd like to address a few points in your post if I may.

You're right: it does have little to do with design. But, almost everything to do with operating conditions, and not much do to with the "culture" of float and charter operators.

Let me explain.

Actually, Frozen Solid summed it up quite nicely.

In response to your comment about VFR:

It commonly accepted that VFR flying is - generally - more challenging than IFR with regards to weather, and being able to make informed decisions about weather. This is due to a myriad of factors such as the fact that there are few available weather reports available throughout the sparsely settled areas these planes fly in, the vast distances sometimes covered, local weather encountered enroute, few options for alternates or places to land, and of course and changes to the weather etc.

Obviously, managing all these factors to ensure a safe flight is the name of the game and when the weather changes unexpectedly or limits get pushed, it makes no difference whether VFR or IFR; things can get sketchy.

They're bush planes, operating mainly in a challenging bush environment. However, I'd like to emphasize the point that bush-planes don't always come with the 'bush mentality' that some people think.

The culture you seem to say is at the root of the problem does exist, sure, but is not as widespread as it appears. At least not in my experience with the DHC-3. Here's a few reasons why.

- Operators that have enough money to acquire an Otter want to see a return on their 1.5 mil investment, the main strategy being many hours of incident-free flying.

- The clients riding in the Otter...say to the lodges, are often quite high-profile with enough money to sue the pants off an eight-legged Giraffe. Nobody wants any part of that.

- And of course then there is the pilot. Usually, by the time a pilot makes it into the Otter he/she knows their limits and tries to stick to them. We're in this to make a living. LIVING, being the key word. At the end of the day it's all about coming back to your family and friends. I know I want to...and I don't know of any that would willingly launch themselves on a suicide mission to transfer a few Turkey's from one Walleye hole to another, or get an atta-boy from the boss. Who cares.

- In the end most people are quite reasonable, be they clients or bosses. Sure, there's the pressure of doing the crew-change on change day, for if you don't it's a logistical nightmare. But this time next year, not many will remember the day you did it on a Wednesday rather than Tuesday...but they will remember that Tuesday you smoked 'er in with 9 in the back. Conveying this rationale to the people I fly with or for has not usually been an issue. If it is, then it is my job as the pilot to remain professional and stand up to that pressure.
Now, that's different than going to on a 500 mile fuel haul to the Arctic Ocean on a bluebird with NO SIG WX forecast and coming back to 1/8 and 100' in ice fog. That can happen too, ie: operating environment.

You brought up the airlines, so on that note maybe have a look at Harbour Air. They operate a huge fleet of Otters - as airliners. With lots of landings, variable weather and SOP's. They would definitely not be as successful as they are if the typical "culture" prevailed. Come to think of it, when I was flying it off-strip in the arctic we too had SOP's.

Take care,

Dave

[frozen solid]

It just occurred to me while reading this thread that I'm not entirely sure what "over represented" actually means. In my first response I took it to mean, "shows up more than it would be reasonable to expect" in accident reports. I disagreed with that, for the reasons that I stated. I suppose however if you take "over represented" to simply mean "shows up in more accident reports than some other types", I guess I would agree, but also for the reasons I and others have stated.

[ragbagflyer]

^What Super Dave said.

... but consider how simple the thing is to operate and the speeds and weather they (are supposed to) operate in.

Clearly you haven't worked an Otter everyday for a season in the mountains, hundreds of miles from nowhere, doing things that nobody ever made performance charts for. Yes, on a calm day with a moderate load it is a nice handling -even relaxing - machine to fly but that's not the reality when you don't get to cherry pick your trips and you are out there pounding out 20 000 miles per month.

[frozen solid]

As a unit of measurement of speed (miles per month), that is equal to 27 miles per hour.

[ragbagflyer]

As a unit of measurement of speed (miles per month), that is equal to 27 miles per hour.

You're right! I better stop slacking off.

[xsbank]

We used an Otter for our Gold River and Kyoquot scheds out of Tahsis and I would do 40 take-offs and landings a day if I got both runs. In a Stoneboat, not a turbine. That was a lot of messing about in changing conditions and I never had a mechanical, even with all those starts. I got pretty good at it, if I say so myself, but we had absolute minima for the Gold River pass; although we had fog, the old dear was good for glassy water so it was easy to just land if the weather got worse, but we got some lovely inflow and outflow winds in the inlets that could make making a stop pretty tricky.

Why am I saying this? There are no absolutes in flying on the coast. The hard limits in the Gold River pass were rigid, but somebody had to have a look to see what they were. VFR was frequently not the case everywhere you had to go, I remember taxiing out of a village because it looked good enough, only to have the fog roll in so I couldn't find the village again, me with a map and a compass, and a large radial that tended to heat up. I remember a trip to Kincolith when the rain turned to wet snow and so I had to step-taxi until the vis got too bad and the snow started to pile up,especially on the tail and we needed lots of power as we were very close to sinking (those of you who have flown there know there are no beaches). Thankfully one of my passengers grew up there and knew exactly where we were and guided me to the village, the entire village was at the dock to meet us because we were so late.

Get the picture? I also flew a 605 and every possible aspect of the trip, including the dinner menu, was known in advance. No comparison.

[Driving Rain]

When I started my job at the OMNR in 81 they had 25 of them. They operated them on floats both amphib and straight water bombing EDO plus wheels skis in winter. We lost 1 in a post crash fire in water bombing accident but the pilot walked away. In all honesty i hated them until it revealed its secrets. They're an amazing aircraft if you handle and operate them properly. I loved the otter in reduced vis situations ...climb prop set, side window down, reduced power and a tad flap it flew solid, could turn on a dime.
It dropped exactly 1 metric ton { 2200 lbs }, had a great drop pattern but had to have the floats almost in the tree canopy to be effective, this of course lead to lots of close calls, but again, not the aircrafts fault! Needless to say they knocked a few chicos down in their day but always brought the pilot back. I have a friend who tells the story of water bombing and after releasing his load heard a crash beacon go off. Turns out it was his! He'd cleaned off the front float spreader the boxing wires were bent and stretched but he made a safe landing all be it the nose of the otter settled a tad lower as the floats splayed a little once the poor wires had to support the full weight. They can take an amazing amount of damage. I'd take an otter places I would not consider in a beaver, even a turbo beaver.
Out to max range our single otters were able to carry about 350 pounds more than our -6 series 3 twotters. Back then our twotters were equipped with water bombing CAPs and the singles had heavy water bombing Bristols {EDOs}. all be it the twin could make two trips to the singles one.
Back then the OMNR did all of its own in house engine overhauls on its 1340s and props too. I never once had a single hiccup. If properly maintained they're just one of the great planes DeHaviland ever produced.

[xsbank]

D.R., I had forgotten the window thing - only a/c I flew where you could trim it out in the climb (watch those cyl. head temps!) and peel an orange, just drop the peel and it would shoot out the window (you had to sit on your maps!). Actually, I have an inkling you could do that with the Racer's 1/4 window? I'm soooo old.

[Driving Rain]

Hot days were a breeze xs!

[CID]

I didn't expect a lot of agreement among "bush pilots" but the studies done over the years support what I stated.

But lets take it as it is, running thru the mountains at VFR minimums is legal, and safe. But is definitely higher risk than your airliner sitting at 32,000feet with nothing but blue sky above.

See, now that's an excellent discussion between a transoceanic airline pilot and a "bush" pilot. What's the work load like on an approach to a lake in the middle of nowhere? Compare it to landing a high performance behemoth in dense airspace in bad weather after a 10 hour leg.

Some of the comments here hint at the very culture I mentioned. It's become commonplace to stretch things in the 704 world. The more remote the operation, the more the rules seem to bend. Competition is a factor as well.

Review the last dozen or so accidents among the west coast 704 operators. It's the same story over and over again. Why is that?

[shimmydampner]

First, I personally don't believe Otters are over-represented when compared to other bush planes, but that's just me trying to think back over the last decade or so of the accidents that I can recall. Seems to me piston single Cessna's are the most common types, but I could certainly be wrong.

See, now that's an excellent discussion between a transoceanic airline pilot and a "bush" pilot. What's the work load like on an approach to a lake in the middle of nowhere? Compare it to landing a high performance behemoth in dense airspace in bad weather after a 10 hour leg.
Some of the comments here hint at the very culture I mentioned. It's become commonplace to stretch things in the 704 world. The more remote the operation, the more the rules seem to bend. Competition is a factor as well.

I can't entirely disagree with your comments regarding rules bending. I think you're hinting at the cowboy mentality, which does exist, however I think it's slowly going away as the types who perpetuate it are either "phased out" or change their ways. I don't think it's as prevalent as it was, and I think it's (slowly) getting better.
I'm quite certain it was your intention, but I'll take the bait and take issue with your insinuations when comparing "airline" pilots and bush pilots. The two types of flying are so different, it's really almost laughable to compare the two. Suggesting that being small, slow and operating away from dense traffic somehow makes flying bush planes an easier task than flying a wide body across the ocean is probably highly flawed. Both require a competent, highly skilled crew that are likely to be subjected to difficult operational circumstances and factors that can easily lead to fatigue. However the skill sets required, the circumstances they face and the causes of their fatigue are really very different. I can't speak to the heavy jet experience, but I can assure you the bush pilot one is no joke and the penalty for a split second of inattention at the wrong time can be every bit as dire...especially in the middle of nowhere. Unless you've experienced it, you likely can't fully appreciate it.
Interesting repeated use of quotation marks by the way.

[Nwtflier]

Seems to me piston single Cessna's are the most common types, but I could certainly be wrong.

If this were the case, which I would agree that it probably is. I'd say that's due to the inexperience of the Cessna drivers, don't get me wrong there's definitely experienced 185/206 guys out there, but not a whole lot of them. As one of my old skippers once told me, "by the time you can push a 206 to the limits of what it can do, you don't really want to be flying a Cessna anymore." Or something to that effect, but I think it sums up that by the time you're driving a DHC-anything, you've scared the piss out of yourself a few times, had an engine give you trouble and/or operate in some "marginal" VFR conditions.

[North Shore]

What's the work load like on an approach to a lake in the middle of nowhere? Compare it to landing a high performance behemoth in dense airspace in bad weather after a 10 hour leg

But then, what's the workload like in MVFR and glassy water to that same lake, compared to a high performance behemoth in bluebird skies?
I think that your comparison is flawed, CID - the two beasts are apples and oranges. Yes, they're both aeroplanes, but the skill sets are quite different - one rewards good handling, while the other rewards good systems management..

[frozen solid]

I don't think there needs to be comparison between any types of pilots. If the world was littered with 6,000 foot runways that had no navaids or approaches, hidden between mountains in crummy weather, and high-performance behemoth pilots had to pick them out from where they were lying in a jumble of other non-suitable runways, and decide just by looking at them from above whether they were good enough to land on or not, and hand-fly their high-performance behemoth to a safe landing on whatever surface they picked out, then maybe these pilots would appreciate some of the stressors in a bush pilot's life. Conversely, if lakes, snowy fields and eskers were located in crowded airspace with multiple control zones and frequencies, and had arrival and approach procedures, and were served by control towers, and bush pilots had to fly for ten hours between these lakes without ever being able to see out the window, also in crummy weather, then shoot a perfect approach and land, maybe they would be able to appreciate some of the stressors in an airline pilot's life.

[frozen solid]

I don't think there needs to be comparison between any types of pilots. If the world was littered with 6,000 foot runways that had no navaids or approaches, hidden between mountains in crummy weather, and high-performance behemoth pilots had to pick them out from where they were lying in a jumble of other non-suitable runways, and decide just by looking at them from above whether they were good enough to land on or not, and hand-fly their high-performance behemoth to a safe landing on whatever surface they picked out, then maybe these pilots would appreciate some of the stressors in a bush pilot's life. Conversely, if lakes, snowy fields and eskers were located in crowded airspace with multiple control zones and frequencies, and had arrival and approach procedures, and were served by control towers, and bush pilots had to fly for ten hours between these lakes without ever being able to see out the window, also in crummy weather, then shoot a perfect approach and land, maybe they would be able to appreciate some of the stressors in an airline pilot's life.

[Rowdy]

I like the fact that a simple discussion over the perceived accident rates of a particular aircraft model has become a comparison between 705 airliners and vfr 703/704 ops. Typical Avcanada.

What I can add to the discussion is the fact that there certainly still is a cowboy/get'er done attitude down in the machines thats designator starts with a C or a D and that the ones with A and B have essentially had that attitude washed clean through SOP's and very selective hiring.

As for the otter, I can count on one hand the number of accidents I've heard of in canuckistan during my short 10 years in the industry. I've seen far more Cessna singles, navajos and king airs augered into the ground however, so I think you're a little off. Perhaps someone with a bit more free time between flights than i have could look up the last two or three years fatal accidents and post the findings based on type? Perhaps compare the BE10/20 to the DHC3

[Redneck_pilot86]

A quick search of the CADORs shows 65 Otter accidents in the last 20 years, resulting in 26 fatalities. 11 of those fatalities occured in 2 accidents in September 1995.

In comparison, 42 Caravan accidents have resulted in 31 fatalities.

I am much too lazy to search each of the piston Cessnas.

[supercub7]

Excellent post driving rain, I am not sure why the OMNR decided to stop using the single otter it is a great aircraft and a true workhorse. The twin otter is good but on floats the prop hangs over the dock, it also burns double the fuel but does not haul double the load. The single swine will haul a hell of a load especially with the various upgross kits that are available. I believe the Manitoba still has two otters which now have the Vazar PT6 conversion installed.