ANC96TA016 · Cessna 182H
Cessna 182H · Accident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) on approach
From Edward G. Pitka Sr Airport (GAL) to Koyuk Alfred Adams Airport (KKA)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC96TA016
- 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
- 0 · 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
- General aviation
- 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
Cessna 182H
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N1997X
- Operator
- U.S. Bureau of the Census
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Edward G. Pitka Sr Airport (GAL), GALENA, AKTo Koyuk Alfred Adams Airport (KKA)
- 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 91: General Aviation
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern base
- 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
- Partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Carburetor heat, delayed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The certificated airline transport pilot reported that he planned a flight to a remote village to conduct a census survey if the weather permitted. While en route, the pilot experienced clear icing conditions and freezing rain at 6,500 feet mean sea level (MSL). He climbed above the conditions to 8,500 feet msl. A layer of stratus clouds initially obscured the village but after passing the village, he noticed that the runway was visible and then made a rapid, low power descent for landing. The airplane entered a left base for landing and the pilot applied carburetor heat about 500 feet above the ground. The engine suddenly lost 80 to 100 percent of power. The pilot performed an emergency landing on an airport access road that paralleled the runway, but was unable to stop the airplane before it collided with a wooden post and a parked airplane. The pilot reported that the cloud cover was consistent with a narrow temperature/dew point spread.
Probable cause
The pilot's delayed application of carburetor heat. Factors in the accident were carburetor icing conditions and lack of suitable terrain for a forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC96TA016
- Event ID
- 20001207X04801
- Case number
- ANC96TA016
- 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: 1b67923ffc78afa355a9b4e65c5c847791d1becf2b88ed99a1b6d5cce38ae21e; retrieved 2026-09-22T23:00:24.922Z.