ANC06LA007 · Cessna 208B
Cessna 208B · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
From Stebbins Airport (WBB) to Unalakleet Airport (PAUN)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC06LA007
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Cessna 208B
- 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
- N1263Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Stebbins Airport (WBB), Stebbins, AKTo Unalakleet Airport (PAUN), Unalakleet, 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Low altitude flight/maneuver, performed
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After completing a multiple leg-cargo flight, the commercial pilot was conducting a 14 CFR Part 91, positioning flight. During the flight the pilot was flying at low-level looking for animals. According to the sole passenger, while approaching a ridgeline, the pilot climbed steeply from 150 feet above ground level (agl) to 400-500 feet agl, banked to the left at 75-80 degrees, and started a descent to about 200 feet agl. The passenger said during the descent he saw the pilot look in the back of the airplane because of noise made by the seats under a cargo net. The passenger said he saw the ground coming up fast, and yelled "whoa, whoa, whoa." The pilot looked forward just in time to pull the yoke back prior to the impact with the terrain. The pilot told the director of operations for the operator that there were no mechanical problems with the airplane prior to the accident. The fuselage and wings received substantial damage during the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain altitude/clearance from terrain while performing a low altitude maneuver.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC06LA007
- Event ID
- 20051101X01765
- Case number
- ANC06LA007
- 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: de6d09fbce8ee9eb579efc96b23b79778329aa2dd9e596b0af9f4c58a6546e05; retrieved 2026-09-21T18:52:35.086Z.