Hageland Aviation Cessna 207A accident
Cessna 207A · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) on approach
From Bethel Airport (PABE) to Mertarvik Airport (PAEW)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC13CA042
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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 207A
- 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
- N9400M
- Operator
- Hageland Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bethel Airport (PABE), Bethel, AKTo Mertarvik Airport (PAEW), Newtok, 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
- Approach · VFR go-around
- 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
- Controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT)
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of a scheduled commuter flight reported that he was about 4 miles north of the destination airport and operating in VFR weather conditions. According to the operator, as the flight approached the airport, the visibility was reduced due to fog. The pilot then initiated a gradual descent over an area of featureless, snow-covered terrain, which made it difficult to discern any topographical terrain features due to flat light conditions. The operator reported that the pilot could see his destination airport in the distance but that, during the descent, he became “uncomfortable” with the approach, and he initiated a go-around. The airplane subsequently collided with a snow-covered frozen river, about 1 mile from the approach end of the airport, sustaining substantial damage to the wings and fuselage. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical problems with the airplane. One of the passengers aboard the accident airplane wrote, in part, “I looked out the window to my right to see if I could see the airport and did not, it was too foggy.”
The operator reported that the accident flight was the pilot’s second attempt to reach the destination airport that day. During the previous flight that morning, poor weather conditions prevailed, so the pilot returned to his departure airport to wait for weather conditions to improve.
Probable cause
The pilot's continued flight into adverse weather and his failure to maintain clearance from terrain while on approach in flat light conditions. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's delayed decision to initiate a go-around.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC13CA042
- Event ID
- 20130508X32011
- Case number
- ANC13CA042
- 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: 88b1f8e06161e126ede88053fb76c6550a002b0cbb32f1ab49de060fe34380ef; retrieved 2026-09-15T21:27:37.956Z.