ANC93LA048 · Piper PA-31
Missionary Aviation Repair CTR Piper PA-31 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water on approach
From HPR · Hooper Bay, AK to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC93LA048
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-31
- 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
- N9102Y
- Operator
- Missionary Aviation Repair CTR
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From HPR · Hooper Bay, AKTo not recorded
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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 collision with terrain/water
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, initiated
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
PILOT-IN-COMMAND EXECUTED VFR STRAIGHT IN APPROACH FOLLOWING THE NDB/DME APPROACH COURSE. WHITEOUT CONDITIONS WERE ENCOUNTERED OVER SNOW COVERED FEATURELESS TERRAIN. VFR FLIGHT NOT RECOMMENDED BY FSS. THE AIRCRAFT FLEW INTO SLOPING TERRAIN APPROXIMATELY 600 FEET BELOW, AND IN THE VICINITY OF, THE FINAL APPROACH FIX. PILOT RECALLED LOSING FORWARD VISIBILITY AND SAID HE WAS NOT REFERENCING THE APPROACH PLATE AT THE TIME OF THE GROUND COLLISION. THE PILOT WAS ADVISED THAT THE AWOS WEATHER OBSERVATION FOR THE DESTINATION CALLED FOR IFR CONDITIONS WITH VFR NOT RECOMMENDED.
Probable cause
PILOT-IN-COMMAND INITIATED VFR FLIGHT INTO IMC CONDITIONS. A FACTOR IN THIS ACCIDENT WAS THE WHITEOUT WEATHER CONDITIONS.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC93LA048
- Event ID
- 20001211X11905
- Case number
- ANC93LA048
- 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: a335461697fe146f186fd4047ff008186fb8cf3a03ec295556712bc1ff9e96fb; retrieved 2026-09-21T23:00:44.136Z.