ANC00FA082 · Cessna 172S
Flight Safety Alaska Cessna 172S · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water en route
From Merrill Field (MRI) to Middleton Island Airport (MDO)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC00FA082
- 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
- General aviation
- 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
Cessna 172S
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N862SP
- Operator
- Flight Safety Alaska
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Merrill Field (MRI), Anchorage, AKTo Middleton Island Airport (MDO), MIDDLETON IS., 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
- En route · descent
- 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 › Suicide, performed
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A private pilot departed from Merrill Field, Anchorage, Alaska, in a rented, wheel-equipped airplane. Prior to his departure, the pilot left an envelope in a friend's car, telling the friend not to open it until after the pilot had departed. The envelope contained a power of attorney, transferring all of the pilot's property to his brother, and a letter entitled "Message in a Bottle." About one hour after the airplane departed from the flight school, a witness aboard a boat saw the accident airplane flying very low over the water. The witness said that the wings were rocking back and forth, with the wingtips almost touching the water. He added that the airplane entered a collision course with his boat, which required his abrupt and evasive action to avoid being struck by the airplane. Numerous other witnesses in the area reported similar encounters with the same airplane. About one hour later, a passing airplane received a distress call from the accident airplane pilot stating the he had a loss of engine power, and that he was going down. The U.S. Coast Guard recovered the pilot's floating body. The airplane sank in deep ocean waters. Toxicology tests revealed Alcohol, Cocaine, and Valium in the pilot's blood, muscles, and organ tissue. The postmortem examination ruled the cause of death as a suicide. The pilot had a history of substance abuse, had previously been convicted of first-degree arson, and was being sought by local police for a recent arson.
Probable cause
Suicide.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC00FA082
- Event ID
- 20001212X21348
- Case number
- ANC00FA082
- 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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2000-07-04.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 32b894272ea424405e1e93df886a457e3abb6d2da6a03e80614f343858cde718; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:04:40.831Z.