ANC09LA069 · Cessna 172L
Smokey Bay Air Cessna 172L · Accident: navigation error while taxiing
From Homer Airport (HOM) to Lake Hood Airport (Z41)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's operator. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC09LA069
- 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
Cessna 172L
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N7136Q
- Operator
- Smokey Bay AIr Narrative disagrees
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Homer Airport (HOM), Homer, AKTo Lake Hood Airport (Z41), Anchorage, 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 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
- Taxi · from runway
- 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
- Navigation error
- 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
- Personnel issues › Experience/knowledge
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 said that after landing he was attempting to taxi to another nearby airport to park and was confused by the taxi instructions given by the airport ground controller. He inadvertently taxied onto a roadway and that the setting sun, which was in his eyes, caused him not to see a warning sign on the right side of the roadway; the airplane's right wing then struck the sign. The pilot had exited the runway's parallel taxiway at midfield onto an airplane parking and fueling area. He taxied to a road transiting the parking area, and turned northwest on the road. The road narrowed at the boundary of the parking area and the pilot passed a "No Taxi" sign located on the left side of the road. The route from the runway to parking is along nonmovement areas, and progressive taxi instructions were thus not available. An interactive airport web site with detailed parking information and taxi diagrams was available on the internet. The appropriate route was to proceed west on the parallel taxiway to the taxilane which crosses the road taken by the pilot. The sign the airplane hit had flashing amber lights and warned of the taxilane crossing. A review of the published Federal Aviation Administration Alaska airports supplement for taxi instructions at the airport revealed the "taxiway is a joint use taxi/road and is used by motor vehicles/bicycles/joggers and tour buses."
Probable cause
The pilot's unfamiliarity with the airport environment, which resulted in his taxiing the airplane onto a no-taxi section of roadway and into a road sign. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's failure to avail himself of additional information that described the appropriate taxi routes on the airport.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC09LA069
- Event ID
- 20090720X31849
- Case number
- ANC09LA069
- 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: 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 2009-07-18.
- API snapshot SHA-256: d9c541a5f785db62b6e3064b28bb86da4b82e98246dbaca0936b72f853d92210; retrieved 2026-09-15T11:56:07.859Z.