Ryan Air Service Flight 403
Cessna 207 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water en route
From Nome Airport (OME) to Elim Airport (ELI)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC93FA050
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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
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
- N6467H
- Operator
- Ryan Air Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Nome Airport (OME)To Elim Airport (ELI), ELIM, 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
- 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 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, initiated
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
PIREPS PROVIDED TO THE PILOT BY FSS PRIOR TO TAKEOFF INDICATED THAT FOG & LOW VISIBILITY HAD BEEN ENCOUNTERED ON THE PILOT'S ROUTE TO THE EAST, FORCING AIRPLANES TO RETURN TO NOME. IN ADDITION, AS THE FLIGHT TAXIED FOR TAKEOFF, THE PILOT WAS TOLD '... VFR IS NOT RECOMMENDED TO THE EAST...' THE AIRPLANE IMPACTED FLAT SNOW COVERED TERRAIN IN A STEEP LEFT WING DOWN ATTITUDE APRX 4 MI EAST OF THE DEPARTURE END OF THE RUNWAY. THE AREA WAS A TREELESS, SNOW COVERED FLAT COASTAL PLAIN BORDERED BY A SEA FROZEN WITH WHITE ICE. THE PILOT HAD RETURNED TO WORK 4/1 AFTER A 30-DAY SUSPENSION FOLLOWING A TAKEOFF ACCIDENT, AND WAS ASSIGNED ONLY TO CESSNA 207 'VFR ONLY' AIRPLANES. THE POI DID NOT DISCUSS THE EARLIER ACCIDENT OR THE PILOT WITH THE OPERATOR'S MANAGEMENT.
Probable cause
THE PILOT INITIATED VFR FLIGHT INTO INSTRUMENT METEOROLOGICAL AND WHITEOUT CONDITIONS. FACTORS WHICH CONTRIBUTED TO THE ACCIDENT WERE: INADEQUATE SUPERVISION OF THE PILOT BY THE COMPANY, INADEQUATE OVERSIGHT BY THE FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION, THE PILOT'S SELF-INDUCED PRESSURE TO CONDUCT THE FLIGHT, AND THE EXISTING WEATHER CONDITIONS AND SNOW COVERED TERRAIN.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC93FA050
- Event ID
- 20001211X12053
- Case number
- ANC93FA050
- 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: 6af92735ed4cc112a6976c7406890ef2fa42fc36b7e4769c73b77f7ef5587590; retrieved 2026-09-18T13:52:59.218Z.