ANC98LA057 · Cessna 206
Cessna 206 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Yuknis Airport (23AK) to Merrill Field (MRI)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC98LA057
- 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
- General aviation
- 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
Cessna 206
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 206
- 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
- N5297U
- Operator
- Ward H. Sattler · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Yuknis Airport (23AK), LIME VILLAGE, 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
- 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 adverse weather, continued
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot and five passengers departed eastbound from a rural airstrip for a cross-country flight across high mountainous terrain. He had flown along the planned route of flight numerous times in the past and obtained pilot reports of weather conditions in several mountain passes that traversed the mountain range along the planned route. The weather reports included wind speeds of 40 knots with turbulence. An area forecast included AIRMETs for mountain obscuration, turbulence in all mountain passes, and icing conditions. The pilot said he was aware of the potential for turbulence over the mountains and climbed the airplane to 13,500 feet. When the flight approached the lee side of the pilot's planned crossing point over the mountains, the airplane encountered severe downdrafts. The pilot applied full power, but the airplane continued to descend toward blowing snow along the mountain ridge. The pilot said he had no alternative but to land into a snow bank. The airplane collided with snow covered terrain at 10,500 feet msl. The airplane's belly mounted cargo pod, and the landing gear were torn off the fuselage.
Probable cause
The pilot's continued flight into adverse weather conditions, and his inadequate in-flight planning/decision. Factors in the accident were weather conditions consisting of a mountain wave, and downdrafts.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC98LA057
- Event ID
- 20001211X09977
- Case number
- ANC98LA057
- 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: 970639f30b4a64e0a64188e0b2527b3a1217771fbe476ac9009248a3c01a8f81; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:50:25.971Z.