The National Transportation Safety Board issued an urgent safety recommendation to the Federal Aviation Administration today based on incidents with aviation services owned by HoTh, Inc.
Chief of NTSB’s Alaska Regional Office, Clint Johnson outlined the recommendations.
Johnson: “We are recommending that the FAA do two things. Number one: that they bring an outside team up to Alaska and do an inspection of Hageland Aviation and look at the policies and procedures and the FAA oversight that has been going on there in the past. The second part of the recommendation is again bring a team from outside of Alaska to give a fresh look, third party look at how the FAA is following their policies and procedures.”
Hageland is a subsidiary of HoTh, Inc. and it’s sister companies Frontier Flying Services and Era Aviation, which may do business as Ravn Alaska, Ravn Connect, or Corvus Airlines are also included in the audit.
Johnson said the recommendations were due to a rise in incidents and accidents however they are mostly focusing on the two most recent.
Johnson: “The most recent accidents or two most fatal accidents, one was in St. Mary’s which was a multiple fatal accident, unfortunately a child was killed in that one as well, that one was in November. That one is being investigated out of our Anchorage office at the NTSB. And most recently two weeks ago or so near Bethel, Alaska another Hageland Aviation airplane crash, unfortunately killing two crew members.”
He added that urgent recommendations by NTSB are very rare and he had not seen one in the 17 years on the board.