LONG BEACH — A commercial flight from Sea-Tac to Honolulu, Hawaii last week experienced engine trouble as it flew toward the Washington coastline, but made it safely back to Seattle after spending more than an hour flying above Pacific County.
On Thursday, Sept. 10, Delta Airlines Flight 419 (DL419) did multiple passes over Pacific County and the Long Beach Peninsula below 10,000 feet. The Airbus A321 Neo aircraft first diverted from its flight path to Honolulu as it flew over the Pacific Ocean just past 5 p.m., about 5-10 miles west of Grayland. It had climbed to about 28,000 feet at that point.
At about 5:30 p.m., the airliner went into a holding pattern for roughly 75 minutes over the county, flying in an identical oval loop that spanned from the northern tip of the peninsula to a few miles east of Raymond. Its last of 10 total loops over the county came at about 6:45 p.m., and its elevation dropped to 5,950 feet while it was in the holding pattern, according to archived flight tracking data from the FlightRadar24 website.
A U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III transport aircraft also flew low over the peninsula around the same time as the airliner completed its final loop.
“Geez, just had some kind of jet fly right over our house,” Chinook Observer reporter Brandon Cline said at 6:49 p.m. regarding the C-17, a couple of minutes after it had flown overhead. Multiple witnesses reached out with reports of the lower-than-normal flights passing overhead.
The C-17 departed Joint Base Lewis-McChord at 6:23 p.m. and flew in a nearly direct pattern until it reached just north of Westport before making a sharp 90-degree turn. It approached the northern end of the peninsula at 6:45 p.m. at an elevation of only 750 feet.
The two aircraft were on opposite sides of the northern end of the peninsula at 6:45 p.m. — the C-17 on the ocean side and DL419 on the bay side — when flight tracking data for the C-17 went offline for four minutes. The military aircraft was over the Willapa National Wildlife Refuge when the tracking data resumed at 6:49 p.m., and had already climbed to an elevation of 3,000 feet.
The Delta flight, which had originally departed Seattle-Tacoma International Airport at 4:40 p.m., flew back toward Sea-Tac after exiting the holding pattern, according to FlightRadar24 data. It landed back at the airport just after 7:15 p.m.
A Delta spokesperson, responding to an Observer inquiry, said on Sept. 12 that DL419 “returned to Seattle shortly after departure due to a mechanical issue with one of the engines.” The flight landed safely at Sea-Tac, with passengers deplaning normally.
“We apologize to our customers for the delay in their travels,” the spokesperson said, and added that customers were reaccommodated on another aircraft. The flight continued on to Honolulu the following day.
It’s unclear if the military aircraft was responding to the Delta flight — such as attempting to provide some type of visual inspection — or if it was a coincidence that the two jets were in the same vicinity at a low elevation at the same time.
