ANC13FAMS2 · Piper PA-32-260
Piper PA-32-260 · Accident: missing aircraft
From Yakutat, AK to Merrill Field (MRI)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC13FAMS2
- 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
- 1 · 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
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
- N3705W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Yakutat, AKTo Merrill Field (MRI), Anchorage, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 47 years (built 1966)
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
- Missing aircraft
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot obtained a weather briefing and departed on a day visual flight rules (VFR) cross-country flight. Although visual meteorological conditions prevailed at the departure airport, the current and forecast conditions were marginal VFR and instrument flight rules along the flight route. Flight service issued an alert notice when the airplane was overdue for arrival, and an extensive search was conducted. Radar coverage was limited; however, several radar targets were consistent with the accident airplane's route. The first and last targets were recorded about 13 and 18 minutes, respectively, after departure and indicated that the airplane was at an altitude of 1,100 ft mean sea level and located in an area between coastline and mountainous terrain. However, the airplane and pilot were not found. The airplane was not equipped with, nor was it required to be equipped with, a digital 406-MHz emergency locator transmitter; such a transmitter may have aided search and rescue efforts.
Probable cause
Undetermined because the pilot and airplane were not found.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC13FAMS2
- Event ID
- 20130917X54848
- Case number
- ANC13FAMS2
- 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: c0dd095c1cc484296c4cc433e7df9b4d24159275dafb13fae5786d8675c8c19b; retrieved 2026-09-14T16:04:12.437Z.