ANC14FA062 · Piper PA-24-250
Piper PA-24-250 · Accident on approach
From Merrill Field (PAMR) to Big Lake Airport (PAGQ)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC14FA062
- 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-24-250
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-24
- 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
- N5158P
- Operator
- Christopher Cyphers
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Merrill Field (PAMR), Anchorage, AKTo Big Lake Airport (PAGQ), Big Lake, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 56 years (built 1958)
- 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
- 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
- Unknown or undetermined
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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 › Physical
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The passenger reported that, before departing for the short personal flight to the private pilot's residence, she and the pilot went to dinner and then a local bar. They then departed, and she remembered hitting something like a "bump" while the airplane was on approach to the destination airport, but she could not recall anything else about the accident sequence due to her injuries. Dark night conditions prevailed at the time of the accident. The passenger reported no mechanical problems with the airplane, and the pilot did not mention any mechanical problems during the flight.
The airplane wreckage was found alongside a road adjacent to the destination airport. An area believed to be the initial impact site had two broken 40-ft-high treetops located about 50 ft south of the extended runway centerline and 830 ft from the runway threshold. A postaccident examination of the airframe and engine revealed no mechanical malfunctions or anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Toxicological testing detected levels of ethanol in the pilot's blood equivalent to a 0.192 percent blood alcohol concentration, which is 4.5 times greater than the regulatory limit for pilots. Slightly higher alcohol levels were detected in the pilot's vitreous samples, which is consistent with his recent ingestion of sufficient alcohol to cause impairment. Therefore, the pilot's impairment led to his inability to safety operate the airplane, and he failed to maintain clearance from trees during the approach to the airport.
Probable cause
The pilot's impairment due to alcohol consumption, which resulted in his failure to maintain clearance from trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC14FA062
- Event ID
- 20140810X80540
- Case number
- ANC14FA062
- 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: 111b220b32d544d77898a74618848e5c07ccf667f0e87a2e00f5295b12513b69; retrieved 2026-09-14T17:23:26.655Z.