ANC97LA025 · Piper PA-22
Piper PA-22 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From PORT ALSWORTH, AK to Merrill Field (MRI)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC97LA025
- 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
- 3 · 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
Piper PA-22
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-22
- 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
- N7235D
- Operator
- Bradley W. Johnson · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From PORT ALSWORTH, AKTo Merrill Field (MRI), Anchorage, 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 › Aircraft control, 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 noninstrument-rated private pilot and two passengers were on a cross country flight on top of an overcast at 10,000 feet msl when the pilot radioed FAA air traffic controllers for assistance. The pilot told controllers he thought he was a few miles from Anchorage, Alaska, his intended destination, but he was actually about 124 miles northwest of Anchorage. The pilot was asked if he could turn towards and cross a nearby mountain range to reach VFR conditions. He indicated he did not have enough fuel left, and that he was presently flying through the tops of the overcast. During his communications with the controllers, the pilot noted a marked disparity between his wet compass and his gyro driven heading indicator; he also said his only electronic navigation instrument aboard, a loran, was not reliable. Radio contact was lost with the pilot, and soon thereafter, an ELT was heard. The airplane was discovered crashed in a near vertical position on a glacier. Postaccident inspection disclosed no mechanical anomalies with the airplane and a functional loran. About five to six gallons of fuel was remaining in the left wing fuel tank.
Probable cause
The pilot's continued VFR flight into instrument meteorological conditions, and subsequent failure to maintain control of the airplane. Factors associated with the accident are the pilot's inadequate weather evaluation, his becoming lost/disoriented, and spatial disorientation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC97LA025
- Event ID
- 20001208X07368
- Case number
- ANC97LA025
- 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: ac58b07f94ddd258fbc50a61e403f62703fa1077555d6bb197cd70927d22398f; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:02:57.357Z.