ANC97FA097 · Piper PA-32
Piper PA-32 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) on approach
From Haines Airport (HNS) to Skagway Airport (SGY)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC97FA097
- 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
- 4 · 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
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
- N15199
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Haines Airport (HNS), Haines, AKTo Skagway Airport (SGY)
- 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
- Approach
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- 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
- Accessory drive assembly, drive gear › Sheared
- Ignition system, magneto › Jammed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The aircraft (acft) was on an air taxi/sightseeing flight (flt), which was an optional tour to a cruise liner trip. After viewing glaciers, flt was returning to land. Approach to airport (arpt) was along inlet shore, which had steep mountains descending to the water & infrequent areas of small beach. About 1,200' above water & 1-1/2 mi from arpt, engine lost power. Acft was ditched about 100' from shore near small cliffs. Passengers (pax) exited 1st into 39 deg water, but none exited with life vests. Plt threw one life vest out & exited as acft sank. With help from her husband, a pax donned the life vest that was thrown out; she partially inflated it using oral inflation tube, although it had CO2 cylinder for rapid inflation. Rescue helicopter arrived in about 10 min. Pax with life vest & plt were rescued; 2 pax drowned; other 2 pax were not found. Surviving pax did not recall briefing about location or use of life vests. Life vests were stored in seat-back pouches, but pouch openings were covered by slip-cover type seat covers. Exam of engine revealed left magneto impulse coupling had failed, stopping rotation of magneto drive gear. Several gear teeth on intermediate idler gear were damaged, disconnecting crankshaft from accessory gear train.
Probable cause
jamming/failure of the left magneto impulse coupling, which stopped rotation of the magneto gear, and resulted in subsequent shearing of the accessory intermediate idler gear. Factors relating to the accident were: the lack of suitable terrain for a forced landing, which necessitated ditching of the aircraft; the passenger's lack of awareness concerning access to life vests, due to the pilot's inadequate briefing and the seat covers being installed over pouches that held the life vests; insufficient company standards/procedures regarding access to life vests.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC97FA097
- Event ID
- 20001208X08272
- Case number
- ANC97FA097
- 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 1997-07-04.
- API snapshot SHA-256: eb2b9c6cb4f218a9b602d3879ddc95c009e851fe2f92927bee8ff120b1d391bb; retrieved 2026-09-18T13:29:13.384Z.