Flight 842 · Piper PA-32-301
Piper PA-32-301 · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Port Heiden Airport (PAPH) to King Salmon Airport (PAKN)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC07FA007
- 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
- 2 · 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Piper PA-32-301
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N8361Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Possible conflict
- From Port Heiden Airport (PAPH), Port Heiden, AKTo King Salmon Airport (PAKN), Port Heiden, 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
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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 › Aircraft control, 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 commercial pilot departed on a Title 14, CFR Part 135, scheduled passenger flight, returning from a remote coastal village during dark night conditions. The pilot's intended flight route was over remote and unpopulated terrain, with no ground based light sources to provide visual cues. The flight was originally scheduled to depart during daylight hours, but poor weather conditions contributed to its late departure. When the flight did not arrive at its destination, an aerial search was initiated. The airplane's fragmented wreckage was along the pilot's intended route, about 15 miles northeast of the departure airport. The airplane had collided with flat, featureless, snow-covered, terrain. The debris trail measured about 575 feet long. Responding aviation rescue crews reported that due to dark night conditions, along with absence of ground based light sources and the lack of visual cues in the area of the accident site, the use of night vision goggles (NVG) was required to discern topographical features. All of the airplane's major components were located at the main wreckage site, and no preaccident anomalies were noted with the accident airplane. A postaccident review of the pilot's personal flight logbook revealed that the pilot had logged about 322 hours of flight time at night, and all but 32.6 flight hours had been accrued while acting as second-in-command.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane during cruise flight, which resulted in an uncontrolled descent, and an in-flight collision with snow-covered terrain. Contributing to the accident were the pilot's spatial disorientation, and dark night conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC07FA007
- Event ID
- 20061221X01831
- Case number
- ANC07FA007
- 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: 2e88c3ae34eb3d43fdcdf851c538c0f9d016e161f0e5123d0b94e2a90af4a381; retrieved 2026-09-18T12:56:08.503Z.