ANC13FA027 · Cessna 182B
Cessna 182B · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin en route
From Merrill Field (PAMR) to Takotna Airport (TCT)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC13FA027
- 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
- 3 · 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 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
- N2343G
- Operator
- Smith Ted R
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Merrill Field (PAMR), Anchorage, AKTo Takotna Airport (TCT), Takotna, 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
- Aerodynamic stall/spin
- 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
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot and two passengers were on a personal cross-country flight that included flying through a narrow mountain pass. The typical route through the pass required making multiple turns, and the pass intersected with a box canyon. A family member reported the airplane overdue for arrival, and an alert notice was issued. The airplane's wreckage was located the following day at the bottom of the box canyon.
A pilot who flew through the mountain pass on the morning of the accident reported 4,400-foot ceilings, severe turbulence, and flat light conditions. A friend of the pilot who attempted to cross the mountain pass the day of the accident reported flat light conditions and having difficulty discerning terrain features. He turned the airplane around due to the weather conditions and returned to the airport. He also stated that the accident pilot had become disorientated the previous year while flying a helicopter through the same mountain pass and had taken the wrong route.
A postaccident examination revealed no evidence of a mechanical malfunction or failure with the airframe or engine that would have precluded normal operation. Given the lack of mechanical anomalies, the reported weather conditions, and the pilot statements, it is likely that the accident pilot mistakenly entered the box canyon thinking it was his route. Additionally, wreckage impact signatures and GPS data indicated that it is likely that the pilot was attempting to avoid rising terrain by entering a steep bank turn, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain adequate airspeed while maneuvering inside a box canyon and the airplane’s subsequent aerodynamic stall, which resulted in an in-flight collision with mountainous terrain. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s visual disorientation in flat light conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC13FA027
- Event ID
- 20130305X71252
- Case number
- ANC13FA027
- 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: afae8f94fa01ef1fed3795db415d82eaf968bf8f8d8462f42b826c8f45ab29f2; retrieved 2026-09-14T15:53:55.515Z.