Servant Air Flight 502
Piper PA-32R-300 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water en route
From Anaktuvuk Pass Airport (PAKP) to Bettles Airport (PABT)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC99FA130
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-32R-300
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N9166K
- Operator
- Servant Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Anaktuvuk Pass Airport (PAKP), ANAKTUVUK PASS, AKTo Bettles Airport (PABT)
- 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
- 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 › Flight into known adverse weather, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After receiving a full weather briefing, the commercial certificated pilot departed on a VFR scheduled domestic flight with U.S. mail as the cargo. The intended route was over mountainous terrain. When the pilot opened his flight plan, the flight station specialist advised the pilot of AIRMETs for mountain obscuration and icing. After dropping mail at an intermediate stop, the pilot advised he was inbound to a planned refueling stop. The airplane did not arrive, and an ELT signal was reported 22 miles north of the refueling destination. The accident site was located the following day in a direct line between the intermediate stop and the refueling destination. The airplane collided at high speed with a mountain side at 4,500 feet msl of a 4,720 foot mountain. An area forecast included occasional ceilings below 1,000 feet, with visibility below 3 statute miles in light rain and mist. AIRMETs were issued for mountain obscuration, with mountains occasionally obscured in clouds and in precipitation. AIRMETs were issued for icing with occasional moderate rime icing in clouds and in precipitation from 6,000 to 18,000 feet. Search personnel reported that the mountain tops in the area of the ELT were obscured by fog and snow showers. The accident site was covered by about 4 inches of snow.
Probable cause
The pilot's continued flight into known adverse weather conditions. Factors in the accident were low ceilings and snow.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC99FA130
- Event ID
- 20001212X19658
- Case number
- ANC99FA130
- 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: 3c9d49776746cb050b0d6ee574a10f54fbf95ea8e2a5cf6b983c2f49f588c12c; retrieved 2026-09-18T13:16:03.942Z.