ANC96FA109 · Cessna 180B
Cessna 180B · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Palmer, AK to LAKE ALEKNAGIK, AK
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC96FA109
- 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
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 180B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 180
- 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
- N9141T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Palmer, AKTo LAKE ALEKNAGIK, 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 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
- En route · cruise
- 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 encounter with weather
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC)
- 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 › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The first pilot, a non-instrument rated private pilot, departed on a cross-country flight to a remote area in a float equipped airplane. He was accompanied by a commercial/instrument rated pilot/passenger. The flight was reported overdue and was located 3 days later by search personnel. The airplane collided with mountainous terrain at an elevation of 2,200 feet along the intended flight path to the destination. The accident site was located in an area of hills that had a maximum elevation of 2,452 feet and surrounded by low, flat terrain. About 37 miles east at Iliamna, AK, the 1514 special weather observation was in part: 2,400 feet broken, 4,000 feet overcast, visibility 4 miles in light rain and mist, temperature 55 deg, dew point 52 degrees, wind from 100 deg at 13 knots.
Probable cause
VFR flight by the pilot into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC), and failure of the pilot to maintain sufficient altitude and/or clearance from mountainous terrain. Factors relating to the accident were: the adverse weather condition (low ceiling and rain) and terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC96FA109
- Event ID
- 20001208X06133
- Case number
- ANC96FA109
- 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: 6259983744a2d5a84ea25329e567a082202b5344d879c3c605e6c6b38d3c181f; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:15:15.048Z.