Alaska Central Express Beech 1900C accident
Beech 1900C · Accident: in flight collision with object on approach
From Alsek River Airport (A57) to Juneau International Airport (PAJN)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC04LA009
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Beech 1900C
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 1900
- 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
- N112AX
- Operator
- Alaska Central Express
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Alsek River Airport (A57), Yakutat, AKTo Juneau International Airport (PAJN), Juneau, 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 · IFR final 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 collision with object
- 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
- Tree(s)
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The Title 14, CFR Part 135 cargo flight was on an instrument approach in dark night conditions to the destination airport when it collided with a tree. The flight was able to continue and land at the destination airport without further incident. The flight crew reported that they were cleared for the LDA-2 approach to runway 8, and were inside the final approach fix when the collision occurred. The LDA-2 approach minimum descent altitude is 1,000 feet, and the distance from the final approach fix to the touchdown zone is 3.2 miles. The reported weather at the destination airport at the time of arrival was 2 miles visibility, in light snow, with an 800 foot obscured ceiling. An FAA aviation safety inspector who inspected the airplane, said he found tree fragments imbedded in the airplane's right wing. He said the tree that was struck by the airplane was about 2 miles from the airport, and .24 miles north of the course centerline. The inspector said the tree's base elevation was between 200 to 300 feet msl, and he estimated the tree's height at 100 feet agl. The airplane received damage to the right side of the nose section, and the inboard section of the right wing.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain altitude/clearance from obstacles when approaching the airport, which resulted in an in-flight collision with a tree. Factors associated with the accident were the dark night, snow showers, and the pilot's failure to maintain runway alignment.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC04LA009
- Event ID
- 20031201X01966
- Case number
- ANC04LA009
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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: 6376ea6930c784bad477b0ffc663e5be213c0fa85c66a1c98d4ac992d370e4ba; retrieved 2026-09-18T15:35:24.095Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N112AX; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.