Flight Alaska Flight 555
Cessna 207 · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin while maneuvering
From Quinhagak Airport (PAQH) to Napaskiak Airport (PAPK)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC09LA012
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 207
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 207
- 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
- N36CF
- Operator
- Flight Alaska
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Quinhagak Airport (PAQH), Quinhagak, AKTo Napaskiak Airport (PAPK), Napaskiak, 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
- Maneuvering
- Defining eventThe 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
- Aerodynamic stall/spin
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Prior to the accident flight, the operator reported that numerous flights from their base had been canceled or delayed due to poor weather earlier in the day. The weather improved in the afternoon, and the pilot departed on a commuter flight for his first destination, but did not land because of low visibility. The pilot continued to his second destination, and encountered light icing conditions while en route. After landing at his second stop, he deiced the airplane. The pilot then departed on the accident flight to return to his base, where the weather was reported as a ceiling of 500 feet overcast, with a visibility of 5 miles. After departure, the weather at the destination deteriorated, and the pilot decided to divert to an airport about 5 miles from his base. While maneuvering over the airport for landing, the pilot began a descending left turn toward the approach end of runway. The airplane stalled and mushed to the ground, about 250 feet short of the runway threshold. A postcrash fire erupted as the pilot and passenger were exiting the airplane. The pilot reported that when he arrived over the accident airport, the airplane had accumulated some ice, he was about 200 feet agl, and the visibility was about 1 mile. At the time of the accident, the destination airport was reporting, in part, a visibility of 3/4 statute mile in mist, 500 feet broken, with a temperature and dew point of 21 degrees F.
Probable cause
The pilot's continued flight into adverse weather and icing conditions, and his failure to maintain sufficient airspeed to avoid a stall, resulting in a loss of control and in-flight collision with terrain while on an approach to land.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC09LA012
- Event ID
- 20081117X71613
- Case number
- ANC09LA012
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: a1a8c359da3e163fc2c4153b236c4ac94c0abee6d034867fcf5463eeb589d79e; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:33:21.967Z.