ANC99FA108 · Cessna A185F
Cessna A185F · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
From Haines Airport (HNS) to Juneau International Airport (JNU)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC99FA108
- 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
- 4 · 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
Cessna A185F
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 185
- 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
- N80229
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Haines Airport (HNS), Haines, AKTo Juneau International Airport (JNU), 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
- Maneuvering
- 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, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot obtained a weather briefing prior to departing along a coastal route he had flown several times previously. The FAA FSS briefer advised that VFR flight was not recommended due to low visibility, clouds, and rain. The pilot contacted the destination airport control tower with a position report of five miles west of the Juneau International Airport. The controller responded that the airport was VFR, but conditions were lower to the west, and that two other airplanes to the west were unable to get in due to poor weather conditions. The pilot said he would try to reach the airport from another direction. About nine minutes later, the pilot radioed he was 'turning around.' Seconds later, the controller heard an ELT signal. The airplane wreckage was located about 500 feet msl on an island, about three miles south of the destination airport. The airplane was destroyed by impact forces. A postmortem toxicology test revealed Chlorpheniramine and Dextromethorphan in the pilot's blood and urine. Chlorpheniramine may be found in a number of over-the-counter cold remedies. The warning associated with this compound states, in part: 'Do not drive or operate machinery while taking this medicine as it may cause drowsiness.' Dextromethorphan is used as a cough suppressant.
Probable cause
The pilot's continued VFR flight into instrument meteorological conditions. Factors associated with the accident were mountainous/hilly terrain, low ceilings, the pilot's improper in-flight decision making, and the pilot's impairment from over-the-counter drugs.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC99FA108
- Event ID
- 20001212X19392
- Case number
- ANC99FA108
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1999-08-09.
- API snapshot SHA-256: fe3d6f9295169c431a853bef1e6d696583f763f7fe0823f72f991b27abd2529c; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:53:52.092Z.