Inland Aviation Services Cessna 207 accident
Cessna 207 · Accident: VFR encounter with IMC en route
From McGrath, AK to Anvik Airport (PANV)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC11FA077
- 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
- 2 · 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 207
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 207
- 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
- N91099
- Operator
- Inland Aviation Services
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From McGrath, AKTo Anvik Airport (PANV), Anvik, 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
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot departed with five passengers on an on-demand air taxi flight between two remote Alaskan villages separated by mountainous terrain. When the airplane did not reach its destination, the operator reported the airplane overdue. After an extensive search, the airplane's wreckage was discovered in an area of steep, tree-covered terrain, about 1,720 feet msl, along the pilot's anticipated flight path. The flight was conducted under visual flight rules, but weather conditions in the area were reported as low ceilings and reduced visibility due to rain, fog, and mist. There is no record that the pilot obtained a weather briefing before departing.
According to a passenger who was seated in the front, right seat, next to the pilot, about 20 minutes after departure, as the flight progressed into mountainous terrain, low clouds, rain and fog restricted the visibility. At one point, the pilot told the passenger, in part: "This is getting pretty bad." The pilot then descended and flew the airplane very close to the ground, then climbed the airplane, and then descended again. Moments later, the airplane entered "whiteout conditions," according to the passenger. The next thing the passenger recalled was looking out the front windscreen and, just before impact, seeing the mountainside suddenly appear out of the fog.
A postaccident examination did not reveal any evidence of a mechanical malfunction. A weather study identified instrument meteorological conditions in the area at the time of the accident.
Given the lack of mechanical deficiencies with the airplane and the passenger's account of the accident, it is likely that the pilot flew into instrument meteorological conditions while en route to his destination, and subsequently collided with mountainous terrain.
Probable cause
The pilot's decision to continue visual flight rules flight into instrument meteorological conditions, which resulted in an in-flight collision with mountainous terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC11FA077
- Event ID
- 20110815X51728
- Case number
- ANC11FA077
- 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. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2011-08-14.
- API snapshot SHA-256: fcc355f8f377f47b5121fb0d2bd8ab0f01f6ff0d3a0a1a8fc55b98645d9455bc; retrieved 2026-09-13T21:42:55.097Z.