If seaplanes have a nemesis, it’s the humble standup paddleboard. Pile enough SUPs into Lake Union, bobbing on the surface on a sunny Saturday afternoon, and there’s not enough room for a seaplane to take off or land. Not even for the nimble seaplanes of Seattle’s iconic airline, which can ride on their pairs of pontoons for as little as 13 seconds before lifting into the air.

The recent proliferation of standup paddleboards, along with hot tub boats, sailboats and inflatable kayaks, means Kenmore Air had to stop flying planes out of Lake Union after noon on summer weekends this year. The sight of a classic Seattle seaplane curving its arc around downtown, Space Needle in the background, became a little less common. But a few Costco inflatables can’t take down Seattle’s water plane tradition; not when it runs this deep.

That’s why, on a sunny Friday in October, a de Havilland seaplane putters out from a dock along the Tacoma waterfront, about halfway between Point Defiance and downtown. As the Kenmore Air flight rises from the choppy waters, there’s nothing but elbow room across this stretch of Puget Sound. As passengers rounding our shoulders to peer out the windows, we can see the panel of dials and gauges in front of the pilot, some original 1960s ones with vintage styling, between modern computers. “Reminds me of flying an old truck or something,” the pilot says before takeoff.

Sea lion bellies are visible from this low altitude, especially during the ascent; the animals line the shoreline of Point Defiance and flip occasionally into the water below. The scenic flight cruises above the Tacoma Narrows Bridge at a few thousand feet and lingers at a level where the eye can pick out individual yachts in the Gig Harbor marina and specific greens on the Chambers Bay Golf Course.

Seaplanes have been used for practical reasons to carry supplies deep into the Alaska Bush or scientists to remote glacier sites in the Cascades, where no airstrip can be constructed. This flight, though, is just for the pretty sights. Kenmore Air started its Tacoma operations with these scenic flights, in partnership with the Puyallup Tribe, but plans to expand to scheduled service to the San Juan Islands from the South Sound next year. The airline also offers increasingly more wheeled flights out of Boeing Field and, since 2022, Everett’s Paine Field.

But seaplanes still land on Lake Union. Not only Kenmore Air, but charters from other local companies and arrivals from Vancouver BC’s own airline. In recent years flashing buoys were installed on the lake to ask boaters to clear a path for the planes. Seaplanes, largely thanks to Kenmore Air’s presence, remain iconic in Seattle culture. It’s the only form of air travel that still feels fun and even whimsical, still somewhat homegrown.

David Gudgel was less than four months into his job as Kenmore Air COO on September 4, 2022, enjoying the long weekend for Labor Day when he heard chatter on his boat radio: the Coast Guard, some kind of crash. Having joined the company after serving as CEO of FRS Clipper, owner of the Victoria Clipper, he didn’t know planes well but heard enough to be worried.

A year later, Gudgel’s voice still catches when he talks about that day, pulling up the app to track Kenmore Air’s planes, calling the airline dispatch to finally confirm that it wasn’t one of their own. A Friday Harbor Seaplanes charter went down in Mutiny Bay near Whidbey Island, killing the pilot and nine passengers. The airplane, a de Havilland Otter, was the same kind his airline flies.

Kenmore Air has been around since a trio of friends formed it in 1946. But for all the change, including its first leader not from its founding family, its seaplanes all date from the 1950s and ’60s. The fact that most of its planes are eligible for Social Security is a feature, not a bug. With 17 de Havillands—nine DHC-3 Otters, three DHC-2T  Turbine Beavers, and five DHC-2 Piston Beavers—on its seaplane roster, the airline serves as a kind of worldwide hub for the planes, all watertop workhorses adept at short takeoffs and durability. The de Havillands are preferred by pilots in the Alaska Bush, on the Florida shore, between some mid-Atlantic cities, and especially here, around the Salish Sea. (Cessna makes a new seaplane, but many operations prefer the classics.)

In its waterfront workshops in Kenmore, the company takes the de Havillands apart and replaces old piston engines with turbines, making and replacing new parts with a kind of immediacy in line with Seattle’s aeronautic legacy. Consider the ship of Theseus, a classic paradox pondered by philosophers like Plutarch and Thomas Hobbes: If one replaces every part of a ship, bit by bit, is it still the same ship? Consider the Kenmore Air fleet a veritable armada of such ships, the same but new.

Seaplane accidents are relatively common, with the planes making up only 5 percent of general aviation but accounting for about a third of the accidents. But commercial seaplane incidents—as in all commercial air travel—are incredibly rare; Kenmore Air has suffered only one fatal crash, almost half a century ago. The Mutiny Bay crash may not have been theirs, but the staff knew the pilot, flew some of the same routes, and shared home waters, with the charter company’s base in Renton, at the opposite end of Lake Washington.

Within two days, investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board arrived at Kenmore Air, the de Havilland experts, asking questions about how an Otter could have crashed in such a manner. They returned four times over the next year, eventually focusing on a part in the tail called the actuator. By the time the NTSB released its official report at the beginning of the month, Kenmore Air had already designed a part to serve as a safety backup to prevent the failure that caused the Mutiny Bay crash, installing the new part on their own planes and selling it to other seaplane airlines and private owners.

The engine of a de Havilland Beaver tethered to the Kenmore Air Harbor dock on Lake Washington comes to life and the propeller begins to turn. It has been a quiet morning with bad weather, all the planes still tied neatly along docks or, in an odd sight, parked on the blacktop next to employee cars. But now one plane wakes and its metal parts heave with purpose. The damp air throbs with the sound of something mechanical and analog.

“There’s a certain sound to some of these airplanes that’s pretty special,” says Howard Wright III from inside the seaplane base; clad in a weathered brown bomber jacket, he looks like a pilot (and he is, recreationally). He’s better known as part owner of Kenmore Air, among other icons—his family owns the Space Needle and his own company invests in everything from Ethan Stowell’s restaurants to downtown’s Pike Brewing. But here, at the airline’s headquarters, he’s simply excited about the sound of a de Havilland roaring.

Kenmore staff knows where every one of the remaining de Havilland Beavers and Otters are today in the world, ever ready to add to their fleet. One such plane sat in storage in a NATO bunker in Norway, held by a Norwegian museum, until they sold last year. Another de Havilland parked nearby was built in 1959 for the Belize military but rarely used, ending up with a private owner who sold it to Kenmore Air with only 2,600 hours of total flight time, a fraction of what other Beavers and Otters have logged. Says Gudgel, “It's like finding a 1957 Chevy in your grandma’s garage in mint condition.”

For all their idiosyncrasies, or perhaps because of them, seaplanes remain compelling. Most Kenmore Air staff have the goal of becoming a seaplane pilot; Gudgel himself has started flying lessons, though becoming a pilot isn’t a requirement for his gig, now president of the company. For all those paddleboarders, the sight of a seaplane remains part of the whole draw of Lake Union. Wright considers the appeal and settles on how removed they are from the confines of airports and runways. “You can go to places that nothing else can get you to,” he says.