Flight 514 · Piper PA-32
Piper PA-32 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Gustavus Airport (GST) to Haines Airport (HNS)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC96FA137
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Unknown
Piper PA-32
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N2181Z
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Gustavus Airport (GST), GUSTAVUS, AKTo Haines Airport (HNS), 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
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The air taxi pilot initiated flight over an extensive field of glaciers. The passengers described a gray, overcast sky, with a snow field below and snow on the surrounding mountains. They estimated the cruise altitude was between 100 and 500 feet above the glacier. The flight encountered a fog bank in the direction of travel; before reaching the fog, the pilot elected to turn around. During the turn, the airplane descended and collided with the glacier. Postaccident inspection disclosed no evidence of any preexisting mechanical anomaly with the airplane.
Probable cause
the pilot's inadvertent flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) failure to maintain adequate altitude/clearance from terrain, while maneuvering to reverse the direction of flight. Factors associated with the accident were: the pilot's inadequate weather evaluation; and the terrain and weather, which resulted in a whiteout condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC96FA137
- Event ID
- 20001208X06644
- Case number
- ANC96FA137
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1996-09-02.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 209d1dc45c7c2eccf0190d6fd255ac1ce297f09ed767fa2229364a704a1c4c5b; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:46:52.539Z.