ANC90FA101 · Cessna 207A
Cessna 207A · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water en route
From Seward Airport (SWD) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC90FA101
- 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
- 5 · 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
Cessna 207A
- 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
- N9985M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Seward Airport (SWD), Seward, AKTo not recorded
- 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
- 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
- Visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC)
- 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 › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
TWO AIRPLANES DEPARTED SEWARD WITHIN MINUTES OF EACH OTHER ON A LOCAL FLIGHTSEEING TRIP, AND THEIR FLIGHT ROUTES WERE TO BE THE SAME. AFTER REACHING AIALAK BAY, THIS AIRPLANE PASSED THE OTHER AND STARTED THE RETURN TRIP TO SEWARD. THE PASS THEY WOULD NORMALLY USE WAS OBSCURED BY CLOUDS. THE PENINSULA THAT SEPARATED AIALAK BAY AND SEWARD WAS THE ONLY PART OF LAND THAT WAS OBSCURED BY WEATHER. THE BASES OF THE CLOUDS WERE AT 1200 FEET MSL. THE AIRPLANE WAS LOCATED ON THE NORTHEAST SIDE, AT THE 2700 FOOT LEVEL OF A MOUNTAIN, AND THE WRECKAGE WAS SCATTERED ALONG 330 DEGREES. THE PILOT HAD BEEN HIRED LESS THAN 2 MONTHS BEFORE THE ACCIDENT AS A GROUND HANDLER AND FUELER, AND FOR PILOT TRAINING. TWO DAYS BEFORE THE ACCIDENT HE WAS AUTHORIZED TO FLY PART 135 FLIGHTSEEING TRIPS.
Probable cause
THE PILOT-IN-COMMAND'S ATTEMPT TO FLY UNDER VISUAL FLIGHT RULES WHILE IN INSTRUMENT METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS. CONTRIBUTING FACTORS TO THE ACCIDENT WERE THE LOW CEILING AND SURROUNDING MOUNTAINOUS TERRAIN.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC90FA101
- Event ID
- 20001212X23296
- Case number
- ANC90FA101
- 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: d7352c20f9814fad9a7013750e55d25c2df94999e144c223880db81d0f689d3b; retrieved 2026-09-18T14:06:08.907Z.