Alaska Scenic Air Cessna TU206 F accident
Cessna TU206 F · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Bethel Airport (PABE) to Kasigluk Airport (PFKA)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC09LA038
- 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 TU206 F
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 206
- 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
- N629SP
- Operator
- Alaska Scenic Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bethel Airport (PABE), Bethel, AKTo Kasigluk Airport (PFKA), Kasigluk, 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
- Initial climb
- 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 airplane was taking off on the first flight of the day and had accelerated normally during the short field takeoff roll. During entry into the initial climb, the airplane suddenly rolled into an uncommanded left bank and entered an uncontrolled descent. The left wingtip struck terrain to the left of the runway approximately 1,000 feet from the beginning of the takeoff roll. The airplane came to rest upright approximately 200 feet from the initial impact point. During the impact sequence the unsecured cargo shifted forward and struck the back of the pilot’s seat and the right side of the instrument panel. The pilot exited the airplane unassisted. Photos taken 5 minutes after the accident show the leading edges and tops of the wings, and horizontal tail surfaces were covered in rough frost. The photos also show the frost appears to have been scraped off of most of the windshield. There was substantial damage to the left wing, nose gear, firewall, forward empennage, and both wingtips.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to remove visible frost from the wings during the preflight inspection, and his failure to maintain adequate airspeed to avoid a stall. Contributing to the accident were conditions conducive to structural icing/frost.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC09LA038
- Event ID
- 20090506X83403
- Case number
- ANC09LA038
- 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: dfb9771392aa8683644bdfcc77c4abd386ddbef8a0a18eaae8c8ac5e98d97372; retrieved 2026-09-15T11:01:29.835Z.