Wright Air Service Piper PA-31-350 accident
Piper PA-31-350 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Deadhorse Airport (SCC) to KAVIK, AK
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC01LA027
- 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-31-350
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-31
- 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
- N63MB
- Operator
- Wright Air Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Deadhorse Airport (SCC)To KAVIK, 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
- 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 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
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The air taxi pilot made one attempt to land at a remote airstrip located at an oil production camp close to the Arctic Circle. The pilot was unable to locate the runway, and radioed the camp that the weather was poor. A passenger noted the pilot entered the clouds while he was circling in the vicinity of the camp. The pilot subsequently flew to an airport about 50 miles away, completed an instrument approach due to less than VFR weather conditions, refueled, and made another attempt to locate and land at the remote site. The pilot told the passengers that he would make one more attempt at landing, but if unsuccessful, they would have to leave, as it would soon be dark. During the approach to landing, the pilot stated he inadvertently entered clouds, or fog, and collided with a snow-covered hill. A passenger in the right-front seat indicated the pilot started a descent about five miles from the airstrip, and that he could not see the ground until just before impact. Prior to his second landing attempt, the pilot radioed camp personnel that the weather was still poor, but he would make another try. The airplane crashed on snow-covered terrain about five miles from the airstrip.
Probable cause
The pilot's continued VFR flight into instrument meteorological conditions. Factors associated with the accident were clouds, fog, dusk light conditions, and the pilot's self-induced pressure to complete the flight prior to nightfall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC01LA027
- Event ID
- 20010110X00090
- Case number
- ANC01LA027
- 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: 1e50a429ad0f49ede9a149a74c5d9379fc31822350b62efc27f9d26599cb6738; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:18:51.674Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N63MB; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, HYTA.