ANC98FA048 · Cessna 172M
Cessna 172M · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Big Lake Airport (BGQ) to Petersburg James A Johnson Airport (PSG)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC98FA048
- 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
- 2 · 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
- Unknown
Cessna 172M
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N9212H
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Big Lake Airport (BGQ), Big Lake, AKTo Petersburg James A Johnson Airport (PSG), Petersburg, 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 · climb to 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
- 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 › Flight into known adverse weather, intentional
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The noninstrument rated private pilot was issued adverse condition warnings and urgent pilot reports for severe turbulence. His route of flight took him up channeled, mountainous terrain requiring a climb to a minimum of 9,000 feet msl. Winds aloft were forecast to be between 28 and 41 knots. Surface winds were forecast to be in a downslope direction at 25 knots gusting to 50 knots from channeled terrain. Cessna 172 performance charts for the 180 horsepower engine indicate a maximum climb rate available of 405 feet per minute at 8,000 feet pressure altitude. Ceilings of 8,500 feet were reported on the west side of the mountains. The pilot radioed that he was going to try to get on top through a hole. The airplane was located on the west side of a peak, in deep snow, at 8,600 feet msl, about 40 hours after the departure. The Emergency Locator Transmitter signal was masked by terrain and wreckage. Both occupants were lightly dressed, and appeared to have survived the impact. The pilot was described by acquaintances as inexperienced and prone to taking chances with the airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot's intentional flight into known adverse weather conditions. Contributing factors were the terrain induced turbulence, clouds, the pilot's overconfidence in his abilities, and mountainous terrain conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC98FA048
- Event ID
- 20001211X09965
- Case number
- ANC98FA048
- 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: eeec4c3e5d25b8092c13bc4c1ff98ef9c4d41f1332d7086395fe29a2127ede87; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:35:31.567Z.