ANC04FA070 · Beech 36
Beech 36 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water en route
From Kenai Municipal Airport (PAEN) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC04FA070
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Beech 36
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 36
- 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
- N7673N
- Operator
- John Collins
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kenai Municipal Airport (PAEN), Kenai, AKTo not recorded
- 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 collision with terrain/water
- 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 › 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 solo private pilot was on a day VFR personal cross-country flight when the airplane collided with gradually up-sloping terrain in a remote area. The pilot was fatally injured, and a postcrash fire consumed the airplane's fuselage and empennage. On site investigation disclosed that the airplane impacted in a near level attitude, with the airplane's crash path and debris field approximately 400 feet long. The airplane propeller hub assembly and propellers were found in the debris field. The propeller tips were fragmented, and the remaining blades had torsional twisting and leading edge gouges. No evidence of any preimpact mechanical malfunction was discovered. Conversations with the co-owner of the airplane revealed that the pilot was on vacation in Alaska from California, and had frequently flown the airplane to Alaska. The co-owner noted that the airplane was equipped with a functioning 3-axis autopilot, and that he and the accident pilot utilized it on most flights. He said he was unaware of any mechanical problems with the airplane. A family member of the pilot indicated that he was taking oral medication to control diabetes, but no additional information was provided or discovered. The FAA was unaware of any medical conditions the pilot may have had, and a postmortem examination and toxicological samples disclosed no definitive evidence of preimpact incapacitation.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance from terrain during cruise flight, which resulted in an in-flight collision with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC04FA070
- Event ID
- 20040701X00893
- Case number
- ANC04FA070
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2004-06-26.
- API snapshot SHA-256: b3ee96eb16a208f9e37109ca6899effa3cd27b3895cab7763b3a6bfc29262a0f; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:26:00.620Z.