South Central Air Piper PA-31-T3 accident
Piper PA-31-T3 · Accident: on ground/water collision with object during takeoff
From Belaga Airport (BLG) to Kenai Municipal Airport (ENA)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC98LA010
- 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
- Visual 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
- N314SC
- Operator
- South Central Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Belaga Airport (BLG)To Kenai Municipal Airport (ENA), Kenai, 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
- Takeoff · roll/run
- 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
- On ground/water collision with object
- 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
- Object › Animal(s)
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A twin engine airplane was departing a private airstrip on a non scheduled air taxi flight during night VFR conditions. The airplane had accelerated to between 85 and 90 knots on the runway. The captain noticed a shadow ahead and left of the airplane, and then felt an impact with the airplane. He aborted the takeoff, and stopped the airplane on the runway. He taxied clear of the runway, and noticed a moose had been struck by the left wing of the airplane during the departure roll. The airplane received damage to the left wing tip, and the left wing spar. The airport is served by several air taxi operators, and is surrounded by brush and trees. A road parallels the east side of the runway, and a line of trees begins about 100 feet east of the road. The airport property is not fenced.
Probable cause
An on-ground collision with an animal (moose). Factors in the accident were night VFR conditions that restricted the pilot's visual lookout, and the lack of an airport perimeter fence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC98LA010
- Event ID
- 20001208X09126
- Case number
- ANC98LA010
- 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: c4135c696dc5be6fb48e894a1f46d5ec727b9d07a77884f1f4091387f13865e0; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:18:37.585Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N314SC; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, SOCA.