Flight 502 · Piper PA-32R
Piper PA-32R · Accident: undershoot during landing
From Fairbanks International Airport (PAFA) to Beaver Airport (WBQ)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC00LA038
- 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
Piper PA-32R
- 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
- N8540F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fairbanks International Airport (PAFA)To Beaver Airport (WBQ), BEAVER, 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Undershoot
- 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 › Distance/altitude, misjudged
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial certificated pilot obtained a Special VFR clearance and departed on the first portion of a cargo flight. The visibility at the airport was 2 1/2 miles in light snow. After departure, the pilot said the sky condition worsened, becoming more obscured and indefinite. He decided to return to the airport and obtained a Special VFR clearance back to the airport. He was cleared to land on a runway which does not have a visual approach slope indicator (VASI). During the landing approach, the pilot said he could see the approach end of the runway, but the lighting conditions were very flat. The airplane collided with snow-covered terrain, about 25 yards short of the approach end of the runway. The landing gear was sheared off, and the airplane received damage to the engine cowling, belly structure, and wing spars.
Probable cause
The pilot's misjudgment of distance/altitude, and subsequent undershoot during landing. Factors in the accident were light snow precipitation, flat light conditions, snow-covered terrain, and the absence of a visual approach slope indicator.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC00LA038
- Event ID
- 20001212X20579
- Case number
- ANC00LA038
- 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: 2695f2b0e83da4468d089efa287764bb645396458ab93f21b7d70490967d0d41; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:43:12.003Z.