ANC10CA027 · Cessna 182B
Cessna 182B · Accident: VFR encounter with IMC en route
From Soldotna Airport (PASX) to Port Alsworth Airport (PALJ)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC10CA027
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 182B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N2266G
- Operator
- Furman Richard W
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Soldotna Airport (PASX), Soldotna, AKTo Port Alsworth Airport (PALJ), Port Alsworth, 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- VFR encounter with IMC
- 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 › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The accident airplane was the second of two airplanes, traveling as a flight of two, en route to a remote wilderness lodge in an area of mountainous terrain. The accident pilot stated that as the flight entered a mountain pass, the two airplanes became separated due to heavy snow showers. He said that visibility deteriorated to a point that it was difficult to discern topographical features while in the pass, and he elected to turn around. The pilot reported that during a descending left turn the airplane collided with an area of snow-covered up-sloping terrain, sustaining substantial damage to the wings, fuselage and empennage. The pilot said there were no preaccident mechanical problems with the airplane and that the airplane was recently equipped with a 406 MHz Emergency Locator Transmitter, which aided rescue crews in finding the accident site quickly.
Probable cause
The pilot's decision to enter adverse weather conditions, resulting in a loss of visibility and collision with terrain during a turn to reverse direction.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC10CA027
- Event ID
- 20100319X54736
- Case number
- ANC10CA027
- 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: 1f610eb9b28b05cb7c94331269d658a8f136f7813bf52706082a802c2427878c; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:45:48.336Z.