ANC02FA025 · Piper PA-28-235
Piper PA-28-235 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Dillingham Airport (PADL) to Togiak Airport (PATG)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC02FA025
- 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
- 1 · 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-28-235
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N1220R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dillingham Airport (PADL), Dillingham, AKTo Togiak Airport (PATG), Togiak, 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
- 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 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial certificated pilot telephoned an FAA Automated Flight Service Station (AFSS) and obtained a weather briefing for a flight to a remote airport, located about 58 miles from the departure airport. The briefing included marginal weather conditions at the departure airport, but improved conditions at the destination. An ARMET had been issued for mountain obscurations in the areas between the departure and destination airports. The pilot ended his weather briefing by filing a VFR flight plan. Just before departure, the AFSS specialist advised the pilot that he had received a pilot report for the area between the departure and destination airports. The pilot report included occasional visibilities 3 to 5 miles and occasional visibilities down to zero. The reporting pilot stated he followed the treeline into an intermediate airport (near the eventual crash site), and visibility and ceilings were low in the mountainous areas along the route. The accident pilot acknowledged the report and then departed. About 2 1/2 hours later, the flight was reported overdue, and an emergency locator transmitter (ELT) signal was received in an area about 18 miles west-southwest of the departure airport. The flight never reached the destination airport. Low visibility and blowing snow prevented searchers from reaching the scene until the following day. The airplane wreckage was located in an area on snow-covered hill, about 1,300 feet msl. A postaccident examination of the airplane did not reveal any preimpact mechanical malfunctions.
Probable cause
The pilot's continued VFR flight into instrument meteorological conditions, and subsequent collision with terrain during cruise flight. Factors in the accident were low ceilings, snow, and mountainous snow-covered terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC02FA025
- Event ID
- 20020404X00463
- Case number
- ANC02FA025
- 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: a2bc331a5b71866caf8d9eb1e6d2395c5f95934a4c94ae876084244f1b70ba26; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:08:12.760Z.