Tanana Air Service Piper PA-32-300 accident
Piper PA-32-300 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Aniak Airport (PANI) to Russian Mission Airport (RSH)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC00LA009
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-32-300
- 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
- N31606
- Operator
- Tanana Air Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Aniak Airport (PANI), Aniak, AKTo Russian Mission Airport (RSH)
- 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
- 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
- Stall/mush
- 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, continued
- Pilot in command › Stall/mush, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial certificated pilot was conducting a visual flight rules (VFR) scheduled flight to a remote village. During a telephone interview with the NTSB investigator-in-charge, the director of operations for the company said that during the final approach phase for landing, the pilot reported he appeared to be slow and added power, but the airplane stalled about 15 feet above the ground. The main landing gear struck a berm at the approach end of the runway. The right main landing gear was sheared off. The left main gear axle was fractured. The right wing tip was damaged, and fuel was leaking from the right auxiliary fuel tank. Following the accident, the director of operations for the company flew to the accident site. He said that he encountered isolated snow showers while en route. When he examined the accident airplane, he said he noticed a trace of ice on the airplane elevator. In the Pilot/Operator report (NTSB Form 6120.1/2) submitted by the operator, the pilot indicated that he flew through a large shower and collected ice on the airplane. On the approach to the airport, the pilot indicated his airspeed was 70 knots, and the airplane was performing normally until it suddenly lost altitude.
Probable cause
The pilot's continued flight into adverse weather, and an inadvertent stall. Factors in the accident were adverse weather consisting of icing conditions, and airframe icing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC00LA009
- Event ID
- 20001212X19900
- Case number
- ANC00LA009
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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: d92f442da78de230f3beb28efd49dd900f7cc5948449cd8b909dc36460d60be9; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:51:46.896Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N31606; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.