ANC10LA071 · Piper PA-32-260
Piper PA-32-260 · Accident: loss of visual reference en route
From Warren "Bud" Woods Palmer Municipal Airport (PAAQ) to Warren "Bud" Woods Palmer Municipal Airport (PAAQ)
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
- ANC10LA071
- 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
Piper PA-32-260
- 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
- N3432W
- Operator
- Donald Erbey
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Warren "Bud" Woods Palmer Municipal Airport (PAAQ), Palmer, AKTo Warren "Bud" Woods Palmer Municipal Airport (PAAQ), Palmer, 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
- Loss of visual reference
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The non-instrument-rated pilot stated that he departed the airport in visual flight rules conditions, with various cloud layers throughout the area. As he climbed toward the snowfields at the top of a glacier, the clouds rapidly filled in underneath and built up around the airplane as he attempted to climb above them. He could not maintain sight of the ground and entered instrument meteorological conditions. The airplane had slowed to about 70 knots and he was making a wings-level rudder turn when the airplane impacted the glacier. The pilot said there were no preimpact mechanical problems with the airplane. He reported the wings and fuselage were damaged during the impact.
Probable cause
The pilot's continued visual flight into instrument meteorological conditions, resulting in an in-flight collision with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC10LA071
- Event ID
- 20100824X32042
- Case number
- ANC10LA071
- 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: ad989e64e43b90765916800da89d03786b5305d656d7ba2e535e00718a01665c; retrieved 2026-09-15T14:56:26.800Z.