Cape Smythe Air Service Flight 365
Piper PA-31-T3 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water during landing
From Nome Airport (OME) to Stebbins Airport (WBB)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC97LA048
- 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
Piper PA-31-T3
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-31
- 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
- N218CS
- Operator
- Cape Smythe Air Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Nome Airport (OME), Nome, AKTo Stebbins Airport (WBB)
- 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
- Landing
- 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 collision with terrain/water
- 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 › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was landing at a remote village site. Reported weather was approximately 3/8 of a mile at the time of the accident. The pilot estimated the in-flight visibility as 1.5 miles, and said although much of the runway was shrouded in fog and mist, he could see the approach end of runway 05. While on a base leg to runway 05, he said he was in too close to the runway, and elected to do a tight 'S' turn to gain additional spacing. As he turned to final, he reduced engine power to idle. He subsequently realized he was too low and too slow, heard the stall warning horn, and quickly added full power. The airplane rolled to the right, and struck the runway with the right wing.
Probable cause
The pilot's decision to continue VFR into IMC. Factors associated with the accident are fog/obscuration, and the pilot's failure to initiate a go-around earlier in the approach.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC97LA048
- Event ID
- 20001208X07640
- Case number
- ANC97LA048
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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: 258f8379df8b928c3a64bec88c4687b1eb362274ee51f66b2bbe2e00b75dc0ff; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:39:47.414Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N218CS; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, CSAA.