ANC01LA056 · Piper PA-32R-301
Piper PA-32R-301 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
From St Mary's Airport (KSM) to Emmonak Airport (ENM)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC01LA056
- 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
- Unknown
- 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 PA-32R-301
- 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
- N4375B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From St Mary's Airport (KSM), Saint Mary's, AKTo Emmonak Airport (ENM), Emmonak, 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Stall
- 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 › Stall, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
As the certificated commerical pilot was en route to his destination airport, he noticed a man standing beside a snow machine, waving his arms. He said that he descended to about 100 feet above the ground, and flew over the individual. The pilot stated that the man continued to wave his arms, leading the pilot to believe that the man needed help. The pilot said that he then climbed to 1,500 feet, called the Flight Service Station (FSS) , to advise them to send help. After being assured by the FSS specialist that help was on the way, he once again descended, and elected to drop a note to the man on the snow machine, to let him know help was on the way. The pilot wrote: "With gear down, and full flaps extended, I began approaching the man. At about 75 to 100 feet AGL, the aircraft began to stall. Recognizing the stall, I began to add full power, but the stall progressed to quickly, and subsequently caused the aircraft to touch down on a tributary of the Yukon River." He said that as the airplane touched down, the main wheels and right wing contacted deep snow, and the nose landing gear collapsed.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadvertent stall while maneuvering. A factor associated with the accident was soft, snow-covered terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC01LA056
- Event ID
- 20010517X00951
- Case number
- ANC01LA056
- 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, coordinates. 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: bfd6b26250e1c1e566b0f2ce2b2f793186f2c8f1d43473a3791e55b59240711f; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:02:22.121Z.