Flight Alaska Cessna 172M accident
Cessna 172M · Accident: runway excursion during takeoff
From Bethel Airport (BET) to Napaskiak Airport (PAPK)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC14LA011
- 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 172M
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N20109
- Operator
- Flight Alaska
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bethel Airport (BET), Bethel, AKTo Napaskiak Airport (PAPK), Napaskiak, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 41 years (built 1972)
- 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
- Takeoff · rejected takeoff
- 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
- Runway excursion
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The operator reported that, during the takeoff for the scheduled commuter flight, the airplane briefly became airborne but that it immediately settled back onto the runway. The pilot started to abort the takeoff, but he then realized that he did not have sufficient runway remaining to stop the airplane. He reapplied full power, but the airplane impacted the airport perimeter fence, which resulted in substantial damage to the right wing and empennage. An examination of the airplane revealed no anomalies that would have precluded normal operation, and the engine was run on the airframe through various power settings without anomaly.
Probable cause
The pilot’s decision to abort the takeoff with insufficient runway remaining, which resulted in a runway excursion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC14LA011
- Event ID
- 20131218X65303
- Case number
- ANC14LA011
- 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: 33d448533618f9d6f3cdabd5d3f5631e34accb24ecebf069a99ed8a21b42b066; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:11:46.987Z.