Hageland Aviation Services Flight 70
Cessna 207 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Bethel Airport (PABE) to Akiak Airport (AKI)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC00LA008
- 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
- 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
- N207SE
- Operator
- Hageland Aviation Services
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bethel Airport (PABE)To Akiak Airport (AKI), AKIAK, 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 encounter with weather
- 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 › Flight into adverse weather, initiated
- Pilot in command › Weather evaluation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial certificated pilot arrived at his company offices and conducted a preflight inspection of the accident airplane at 0815 in preparation for a VFR scheduled domestic passenger flight to a remote village. The flight was delayed due to poor weather conditions that included visibilities between 1/2 to 3/4 mile in mist and freezing fog. The ceiling varied between 100 feet, to 1,100 feet. During the delay, two company representatives were in the dispatch office. When the weather conditions improved to 500 feet broken, and a visibility of 4 miles in patchy fog, the pilot departed at 1309 with a Special VFR clearance. The pilot encountered worsening weather about 4 miles from the airport, and decided to return. Instrument meteorological conditions prevailed in the Class E airspace around the airport, and the pilot had to hold, out of the surface area awaiting a Special VFR clearance. Once cleared into the surface area, the pilot said he could not see the runway because the windshield of the airplane was iced over. He could see hangars out the side window. The pilot decided to proceed toward the southeast and began a left turn, but said the engine began to run rough and lose power. The pilot said that application of full power was unable to prevent the airplane from losing altitude. He lowered the flaps in preparation for an emergency landing, and the airplane touched down on snow-covered terrain. During the landing, the nose gear was sheared off, and the right wing received rib damage to the outboard end. At the accident scene, an FAA inspector noted about 1/8 inch of ice on the airplane. Three minutes before the accident, the weather conditions at the airport included a visibility of four miles in light snow and patchy fog; sky condition, 100 feet scattered, 400 feet overcast, with occasional localized lower visibility, and the ceiling varyied between 300 to 600 feet. Examination of the airplane after the accident did not reveal any preimpact mechanical malfunction. The engine produced 2,750 rpm on an engine test stand.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate evaluation of the weather, and his decision to initiate flight into adverse weather conditions. Factors in the accident were adverse weather consisting of low ceilings and icing conditions, inadequate supervision by company management, and airframe icing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC00LA008
- Event ID
- 20001212X19899
- Case number
- ANC00LA008
- 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: 58637cf84d3c073be9b7d7a341fe134e401c8d9e3d2ae27b5546dbf609cc4661; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:51:50.553Z.