Arctic Circle Air Service Flight 218
Cessna 208B · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From BABE · Bethel, AK to Hooper Bay Airport (PAHP)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC08LA027
- 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
- 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
- N5187B
- Operator
- Arctic Circle Air Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From BABE · Bethel, AKTo Hooper Bay Airport (PAHP), Hooper Bay, 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 · climb to 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Flight control surfaces/attachments › Contamination
- Pilot in command › Ice/frost removal from aircraft, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
About 0800, the commercial pilot did a preflight inspection of the accident airplane, in preparation for a cargo flight. Dark night, visual meteorological conditions prevailed. He indicated that the weather conditions were clear and cold, and frost was on the airplane. He said the frost was not bonded to the skin of the airplane, and he was able to use a broom to clean off the frost, resulting in a clean wing and tail surface. He reported that no deicing fluid was applied. After takeoff, he retracted the flaps to about 5 degrees at 110 knots of airspeed. The airplane then rolled to the right about three times in a manner he described as a wave, or vortex-like movement. He applied left aileron and lowered the flaps to 20 degrees, but the roll to the right was more severe. The pilot said the engine power was "good." He then noticed that the airplane was descending toward the ground, so he attempted to put the flaps completely down. His next memory was being outside the airplane after it collided with the ground. The airplane's information manual contains several pages of limitations and warnings about departing with even small amounts of frost, ice, snow, or slush on the airplane, as it adversely affects the airplane's flight characteristics. The manufacturer requires a visual or tactile inspection of the wings, and horizontal stabilizer to ensure they are free of ice or frost if the outside air temperature is below 10 degrees C, (50 degrees F), and notes that a heated hangar or approved deicing fluids should be used to remove ice, snow and frost accumulations. The weather conditions included clear skies, and a temperature of -11 degrees F. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed no observed mechanical malfunction. An examination of the engine revealed internal over-temperature damage, and minor external fire damage consistent with a massive spike of fuel flow at the time of ground impact. Damage to the propeller blades was consistent with high power at the time of ground impact. The rolling/vortex motion of the airplane was consistent with airframe contamination due to frost.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to adequately remove frost contamination from the airplane, which resulted in a loss of control and subsequent collision with terrain during an emergency landing after takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC08LA027
- Event ID
- 20080116X00058
- Case number
- ANC08LA027
- 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: d279456fbe854675db717b3dedf0dd79d7f06d8f1212b5a542472bbbf93c044f; retrieved 2026-09-18T14:39:29.134Z.