ANC85LA076 · Piper 22/20
Piper 22/20 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water during landing
From Girdwood-Alyeska Airport (AQY) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC85LA076
- 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
- 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
Piper 22/20
- Aircraft type
- Piper 22
- 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
- N8035D
- Operator
- Russell James Kendall
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Girdwood-Alyeska Airport (AQY), Girdwood, 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 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
- 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
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Unsuitable terrain or takeoff/landing/taxi area, selected
- Pilot in command › Visual/aural detection
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE ACFT WAS ON A FLT TO TRANSPORT 2 SKIERS TO A GLACIER AREA, SO THEY COULD SKI DOWNHILL TO A LOCATION TO WHERE THEY COULD BE PICKED UP. THE PLT LANDED THE WHEEL/SKI EQUIPPED ACFT ON UPSLOPING TERRAIN. THE VISIBILITY WAS GOOD, EXCEPT A WHITEOUT PHENOMENA WAS PREVALENT IN THE SELECTED LANDING AREA. DURING TOUCHDOWN, THE ACFT STRUCK AN UNSEEN SNOW DRIFT WHICH BENT THE RIGHT MAIN GEAR. THE WHITEOUT GLARCIER WAS SO NAMED BECAUSE OF ITS UNIQUE PROPENSITY TO INDUCE WHITEOUT ILLUSIONS. NO ELT WAS INSTALLED IN THE ACFT, SO THE 2 PASSENGERS SKIED DOWN THE GLACIER & SUMMONED HELP. HOWEVER, THE WIND BEGAN BLOWING & DELAYED A RESCUE. TWO DAYS LATER, AN AIR FORCE H-3 HELICOPTER CRASHED DOWNHILL FROM N8035D WHILE ATTEMPTING A RECOVERY. LATER, ANOTHER HELICOPTER WAS USED TO RECOVER THE OCCUPANTS OF BOTH DOWNED ACFT.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC85LA076
- Event ID
- 20001214X36073
- Case number
- ANC85LA076
- 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: e6257213b43ee71c278b5e482ad4c6db639573c731e8597570346228ab7e8e58; retrieved 2026-09-23T17:53:00.558Z.