Camai Air Cessna 207 accident
Cessna 207 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather
From Ralph Wien Memorial Airport (OTZ) to Point Hope Airport (PHO)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC98FA152
- 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
- 1 · 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
Cessna 207
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 207
- 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
- N1809Q
- Operator
- Camai Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ralph Wien Memorial Airport (OTZ), AKTo Point Hope Airport (PHO), Point Hope, 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
- Unknown
- 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
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Kotzebue, AK, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The airline transport pilot departed on a CFR Part 135 cargo/mail flight for a remote coastal village. When the flight did not reach the destination, an aerial search was initiated. The wreckage was located the following day in mountainous terrain, 21 miles from the departure airport. The airplane had collided with rising terrain. An AIRMET for mountain obscuration in clouds and precipitation was issued for the pilot's planned route of flight. A pilot that departed about 20 minutes after the accident airplane's departure, had a similar route of flight. He characterized the weather conditions along the accident airplane's route as 'very low visibility with rain, fog and varied layers of cloud cover.' This pilot stated that he changed his route in order to avoid the worsening weather conditions. He added that with satisfactory weather conditions, and given the intended destination of the accident airplane, the standard route of flight would be directly over the mountain that the accident airplane collided with.
Probable cause
The pilot's continued VFR flight into instrument meteorological conditions. Factors associated with the accident were low ceilings, mountainous/hilly terrain features, rain, and fog.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC98FA152
- Event ID
- 20001211X10968
- Case number
- ANC98FA152
- 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: 0cf93a76bae2fadbc2e87396f29aefc52213ccc118fcabc239bd325482585018; retrieved 2026-09-18T13:20:50.598Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N1809Q; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, HYQA.