Definitely a HOLY S*** video!
Beaver floatplane crash at Lake Hood in Anchorage caught on tape!
I can’t help but scream RIGHT RUDDER!!! when watching the video.
de Havilland Beaver Plane Crash at Lake Hood (HD) - YouTube)
What the H was their problem there? Forward visibility problem? Improper “TO distance calc”? Tailwind? Dumbass in Command?
I know he dragged a float during rotation but he definitely didn’t have enough oomph to climb out of it. Weird.
And he had open sealane to his right, as can be seen to the right of the screen after the crash and by looking at the Lake Hood map and being familiar with the camera’s location.
Seems to me a combination of heavy aircraft, poor forward vis, and very poor Pilot 101 stuff. He never got quite all the way up on step, looked very heavy and/or underpowered for some reason.
And he had open sealane to his right
That’s actually why I was wondering… since there was a Big Ass channel for him to use, but he didn’t.
After watching it again, you’re right he looked heavy and never did hit plane. I wonder if he was aiming at the “cameraman” on purpose for a “good youtube shot” and screwed the pooch? Either way… sad loss of a nice bird.
“Nice day for a flight so let’s get going here. What’s that fellow doing over ther? Ah, taking my picture! Gotta keep my eye on him, but mustn’t get fixated…”
As has been noted, he wasn’t on plane, so the plane wasn’t ready to fly. Definitely appear to me as though he got distracted by the photographer and didn’t watch where he was supposed to be going. When he became aware of his proximity to the bulkhead he must have felt he was too close to correct his course and he was better off attempting to take off.
Bad choice.
He never pushed over onto the step. he was in a plow attitude the entire takeoff run. He should have known about 3 seconds before that he wouldn’t make it and came off the power.
Piss poor airwork.
Same vantage point two years earlier (almost to the day)
One of my local stations had a brief excerpt of the video up during the evening news before going to a commercial break, and the anchor had this to say:
“Up next, dramatic video of a plane crash. Why high winds may be to blame.”
I’m glad they got that all figured out already…
Yeeeeeah! 
Just a light ripple on the water, and “high winds are to blame”… Now that’s some investigative reporting right there I’ll tell ya.
STUPID media! 
At least they didn’t call it a Cessna – that’s one of my pet peeves.
Na… They’re all Learjets. 
Lets see-
Alaska in the summer
Beaver on floats…
hunting and fishing season…
lets pack all we need on board…
what? the back of the floats are underwater? weird I pumped the floats out 10min ago…
WOW Holy Sh*t the shore line is approaching rapidly… guess I’ll just pull back on the stick as hard as I can, even though all my training says to cut the engine and THEN pull back as hard as I can.
Lucky I had someone filming that so that the insurance company knows EXACTLY what happened…
Stevens tower… Alaska 700, like to report an ELT on guard
http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/822923.html
Plagens said the pilot told him that there were no mechanical issues with his plane and liftoff was normal until the gust of wind struck the plane.
I have to admit it appears there was quite a bit of “hot air” being blown around on that day.
Ouch! Makes for a good you tube video but not a nice way to treat a Beaver 
That could have had a much unhappier ending of course. If I can post an article about the perils of float plane crashes in water:
That looked more like a step taxi than a take off…
He never got out of the plow. A DHC-2 on the Step wouldn’t have the heal of the float digging in like that.
that was last summer by the way (or was it 2 summers ago?)
Last summer J.
“Reported wind at the airport approximately 3 minutes after the accident was from 020 degrees magnetic at 3 knots, with no recorded gusts.”
Emphasis added.