40 Mile Air Piper PA-18-150 accident
Piper PA-18-150 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
From CUB STRIP, AK to 185 STRIP, AK
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC95FA150
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 2 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- Charter & commuter
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-18-150
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-18
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N1590R
- Operator
- 40 Mile Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From CUB STRIP, AKTo 185 STRIP, AK
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Maneuvering
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- In flight collision with terrain/water
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The Operator stated the pilot was supposed to transport two hunters from a small takeoff/landing area known locally as the 'Cub' strip to a larger takeoff/landing area known locally as the '185' strip. This would require the pilot to fly two trips. One hunter was transported, but the airplane did not return with the second hunter. The airplane wreckage was located in a box canyon at the 5000 foot level. The pilot and second hunter were on board. The entrance to the box canyon was narrow and rose consistently. The box canyon could not be recognized from the entrance due to an 'S' turn in the canyon. The terrain immediately below the wreckage rose at a 30 degree slope. The airplane crashed on a 15 degree slope. The area in which the airplane crashed was 300 feet wide and was surrounded by vertically rising terrain.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper in-flight planning and decision by flying into a box canyon.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC95FA150
- Event ID
- 20001207X04116
- Case number
- ANC95FA150
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 9f3c656a7f1f7371c81a379d91c09aa43d769774f591bf35b93b8050305d0a30; retrieved 2026-09-18T13:41:10.149Z.