ANC97LA022 · Cessna 207A
Cessna 207A · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Bethel Airport (BET) to Tununak Airport (TNK)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC97LA022
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 207A
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 207
- 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
- N9603M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bethel Airport (BET), Bethel, AKTo Tununak Airport (TNK)
- 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 › Clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The air taxi pilot was flying cargo to a remote village located near the sea. He reported he was following the coastline, with the ocean on his right, and the shore and rising terrain on his left. He indicated that as he approached his destination, the weather conditions began to deteriorate with lowering clouds, drizzle, and fog. He was trying to decide which direction to turn to avoid clouds, when he entered the clouds and struck rising terrain. The pilot was subsequently rescued by local villagers on snow machines.
Probable cause
the pilot's decision to continue VFR flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC), and his failure to maintain clearance from rising terrain. Factors associated with the accident were: low ceiling, fog, rising terrain, and the pilot's inadequate evaluation of the weather conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC97LA022
- Event ID
- 20001208X07255
- Case number
- ANC97LA022
- 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: 8e345aaadffba94a8b7f09193ff7e18728ccdce4ffed1ad0f59baf3791f95939; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:43:13.851Z.