ANC07LA036 · Bellanca 8KCAB
Bellanca 8KCAB · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
From Merrill Field (PAMR) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC07LA036
- 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
Bellanca 8KCAB
- Aircraft type
- Bellanca 8
- 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
- N5038K
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Merrill Field (PAMR), Anchorage, 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
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was flying over a group of hikers/skiers that were on a remote glacier. After a second pass over the group, about 80 feet agl, the airplane continued away from the group, but collided with the ice and snow-covered surface of the glacier and overturned. The skiers gave aid to the pilot and called for rescue personnel. The witness reported that the weather on the glacier at the time was an overcast sky, and a ceiling of about 600 feet. He also said there was flat light conditions and a haze. The pilot reported that when he flew over the ski members on the glacier, he had a visual horizon and could see the sky. He said he thought he was about 200 feet above the ground. During a second pass, the lighting conditions changed from bright to hazy, and the pilot indicated he probably was looking at the snow covered surface of the glacier. He said the airplane was descending, and he thought the glacier was also descending.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain sufficient altitude/clearance from terrain while maneuvering, which resulted in an in-flight collision with a glacier. Factors contributing to the accident were snow-covered terrain, and flat light conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC07LA036
- Event ID
- 20070510X00549
- Case number
- ANC07LA036
- 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 2007-05-04.
- API snapshot SHA-256: fc537f7a483f6d508a37d9bd3480a51e4b7e6d4d7d7d4bde279f22e40b1f9d96; retrieved 2026-09-21T08:49:16.919Z.