ANC03LA029 · Cessna 208
Cessna 208 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather on approach
From Shungnak Airport (SHG) to Ralph Wien Memorial Airport (PAOT)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's flight rules. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC03LA029
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 208
- 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
- N205BA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Shungnak Airport (SHG), SHUNGNAK, AKTo Ralph Wien Memorial Airport (PAOT), Kotzebue, 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 Possible conflict
- 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 · VFR pattern final
- 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 › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
- 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
Prior to departing on an air taxi flight, the airline transport certificated pilot obtained a weather briefing and filed a VFR flight plan for a trip from his home base, to several remote villages, and return. The area forecast contained an AIRMET for IFR conditions and mountain obscuration due to clouds and light snow. The terminal forecast contained expected conditions that included visibilities ranging from 3 to 3/4 mile in blowing snow, a vertical visibility of 500 feet, and wind speeds from 14 to 22 knots. During the filing of the flight plan, an FAA flight service station specialist advised that VFR flight was not recommended. The pilot acknowledged the weather information and departed. When the pilot took off on the return flight from an airport 128 miles east of his home base, the pilot reported that the visibility at his base was greater than 6 miles. As he neared his home base, the visibility had decreased and other pilots in the area were requesting special VFR clearances into the Class E surface area. The pilot requested a special VFR clearance at 1441, but had to hold outside the surface area for other VFR and IFR traffic. At 1453, a METAR at the airport included a wind 080 of 26 knots, and a visibility of 1 mile in blowing snow. While holding about 7 miles north of the airport, the pilot provided a pilot report that included deteriorating weather conditions east of the airport. Once the pilot was cleared to enter the surface area at 1458, he was provided with an airport advisory that included wind conditions of 25 knots, gusting to 33 knots. While the pilot was maneuvering for the approach, a special aviation weather observation at 1501 included a wind condition of 26 knots, and a visibility of 3/4 mile in blowing snow. The pilot said he established a GPS waypoint 4 miles from the runway and descended to 1,000 feet. He continued inbound and descended to 300 feet. At 1 mile from the airport, the pilot said he looked up from the instrument panel but could not see the airport. He also stated that he was in a whiteout condition. The airplane collided with the snow-covered sea ice, about 1 mile from the approach end of the runway threshold at 1504.
Probable cause
The pilot's continued VFR flight into instrument meteorological conditions, and his failure to maintain altitude/clearance above the ground, resulting in a collision with snow and ice covered terrain during the final approach phase of a VFR landing. Factors in the accident were whiteout conditions and snow-covered terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC03LA029
- Event ID
- 20030306X00292
- Case number
- ANC03LA029
- 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: 0b14ed5f49a5f998bcc08ff00b38b41ff430e13203e04f15d7789d1da9de3297; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:31:50.616Z.