J P Air Service Piper PA-32-300 accident
Piper PA-32-300 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Bethel Airport (PABE) to Nunapitchuk Airport (16A)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC09LA030
- 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
Piper PA-32-300
- 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
- N43551
- Operator
- J P Air Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bethel Airport (PABE), Bethel, AKTo Nunapitchuk Airport (16A), Nunapitchuk, 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The solo commercial pilot was en route to a rural airport on a Title 14, CFR Part 135 air taxi flight with a load of cargo. During an interview with the NTSB investigator-in-charge on April 10, the pilot stated that the flight was without incident until he began the approach to land. He indicated he had difficulty finding the runway in reduced visibility due to blowing snow. He stated he prematurely slowed the airplane in preparation for landing, as he thought he was closer to the runway than he was. He said that due to his low altitude and the poor visibility, he overshot his turn from left base to final, and while attempting to correct and realign the airplane with the runway, the stall warning horn came on, and the airplane stalled, striking the left wing on terrain west of the runway. The pilot stated that there were no preimpact mechanical problems with the airplane, and that he should have paid more attention to his altitude and airspeed.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain sufficient airspeed to avoid a stall during the landing approach.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC09LA030
- Event ID
- 20090410X73921
- Case number
- ANC09LA030
- 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. 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: a5dce904c655b3758e4d132227cbd3d27028609de0a2ab0f16dc4949a9918b98; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:55:15.109Z.