ANC03FA106 · Cessna T206H
Cessna T206H · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Homer Airport (PAHO) to Whitehorse / Erik Nielsen International Airport (CYXY)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC03FA106
- 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
- 3 · 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 T206H
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 206
- 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
- N72598
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Homer Airport (PAHO), Homer, AKTo Whitehorse / Erik Nielsen International Airport (CYXY), Whitehorse
- 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
- Destroyed
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
At 0645, the private certificated pilot obtained a weather briefing from an FAA automated flight service station and filed a VFR flight plan for a 4.5 hour flight over terrain that went from sea level to mountainous, with a transition eastbound through a mountain pass. The weather briefing included isolated areas of low visibility, and forecast the mountain pass as VFR in rain showers. The pass, elevation about 3,000 feet msl, is located about 10 miles northeast of the accident site, and about 7 miles north-northeast of the closest weather observation station. The briefing did not include weather observations from either side of the pass, nor any pilot reports for the area, because the first observations near the pass for the day had not been received by the FAA when the pilot concluded his briefing at 0655. The first weather observation near the pass was posted to the FAA by a weather observer at 0659. The observation included a visibility of 1/2 statute mile in mist, an indefinite ceiling with a vertical visibility of 300 feet, and contained a remarks section that estimated the pass was closed. The pilot departed on the flight at 0752. The pilot did not request any further weather information from the FAA during the flight. At 1005, near the time of the crash, the weather observation station reported the visibility as 1 statute mile, an indefinite ceiling with a vertical visibility of 300 feet, and estimated the pass was closed. The flight did not arrive at is destination and was reported overdue at 1522. A relative of the pilot located the burning wreckage about 2100 on the side of a mountain at an elevation of about 3,700 feet msl. The accident site was about 4 miles west of the weather observation station. The airplane was consumed by a postcrash fire. A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that it collided upright with the terrain in about a 40 degree left bank. Examination of the wreckage did not disclose any preimpact mechanical malfunction.
Probable cause
The pilot's continued VFR flight into instrument meteorological conditions, and subsequent collision with mountainous terrain while maneuvering. Factors contributing to the accident were weather conditions consisting of clouds/mist and low ceilings, and the pilot's failure to obtain in-flight weather advisories before entering mountainous terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC03FA106
- Event ID
- 20030910X01508
- Case number
- ANC03FA106
- 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: c05e48672e67502af30120f00c67def7c614cc35b642cfc8c3a3f412906e8107; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:58:18.682Z.