Tatonduk Outfitters Cessna 208B accident
Cessna 208B · Accident: in flight encounter with weather on approach
From Deadhorse Airport (PASC) to Barrow, AK
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC02FA020
- 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
- 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 208B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 208
- 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
- N208TF
- Operator
- Tatonduk Outfitters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Deadhorse Airport (PASC), Deadhorse, AKTo Barrow, 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
- Approach
- 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
- Stall/mush
- 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 › Flight into known adverse weather, continued
- Pilot in command › Stall/mush, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The air taxi pilot was flying four passengers and cargo to a remote camp and airstrip surrounded by principally flat, snow-covered tundra. He had difficulty locating the airstrip due to ice fog and reduced visibility, and initially flew over the top of the runway. A passenger saw the airstrip, and about the same time, the camp operator radioed the pilot that the airplane had just passed the camp. The pilot made a descent and an approach to the airstrip, but the airplane stalled and collided with terrain about 1/4 mile short of the runway. The camp operator noted that at the time of the accident there was ice fog in the area, and a portion of the runway was not visible due to the fog. He estimated the horizontal visibility to be about 3/4 of a mile. Postaccident inspection of the airplane disclosed approximately 1/2 inch of ice on the airplane's left lift strut and main landing gear leg. The pilot said after the accident that either a cabin door or cargo pod door may have opened during the approach. Postaccident inspection, and interviews with passengers, disclosed no evidence of an in-flight cargo or cabin door opening, and crush lines on the cargo pod door are consistent with the door being closed at impact.
Probable cause
The pilot's continued flight into adverse weather conditions, and an inadvertent stall. Factors associated with the accident are fog, obscuration, and icing conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC02FA020
- Event ID
- 20020320X00371
- Case number
- ANC02FA020
- 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: 0e1c9ae9d2ebf9caab00b493c17013b047df83521617aff9aeaae60a6f138d59; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:05:09.504Z.