ANC18FA036 · Piper PA-28-180
Piper PA-28-180 · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) en route
From Merrill Field (MRI) to Valdez Pioneer Field (VDZ)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC18FA036
- 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
- Unknown
Piper PA-28-180
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N7061W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Merrill Field (MRI), Anchorage, AKTo Valdez Pioneer Field (VDZ), Valdez, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 56 years (built 1962)
- 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
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot departed on a solo cross-country flight through mountainous terrain. The airplane was subsequently found on the side of a steep, snow-covered mountain near a well-known, charted mountain pass. Detailed radar data were not available, and the airplane's GPS data did not include the end of the flight; therefore, the exact flight track could not be determined.
The damage to the airplane and the debris field were consistent with a high-speed impact into deep snow in a relatively wings-level attitude on a heading toward the destination. Examination of the airframe, engine, and associated systems revealed no evidence of mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation.
Aviation weather camera images near the time and location of the accident indicated an overcast layer of clouds obscuring the mountain tops, and two pilots reported low ceilings and obscured mountains in the area. Forecast weather products that would have been available to the pilot before the flight indicated visual flight rules (VFR) conditions at the departure airport and marginal VFR conditions from the mountain pass to the destination. There was no record that the pilot obtained a weather briefing for the intended route of flight.
The pilot's flight logbook and current flight instructor(s) were not located or identified; therefore, whether the pilot had adequate training or had been endorsed by an instructor to complete the solo flight could not be determined.
Given the reported and documented weather conditions in the area about the time of the accident, it is likely that the pilot encountered and chose to continue through restricted visibility conditions as he navigated through the mountain pass, which resulted in controlled flight into terrain.
Probable cause
The student pilot's decision to depart and continue on a solo cross-country flight through mountainous terrain in marginal visual flight rules conditions, which resulted in controlled flight into terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC18FA036
- Event ID
- 20180513X93216
- Case number
- ANC18FA036
- 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: f2c26431dfb9ae2ab8b8b67969a65d32ca9c28faeeb15c6e9ccf12def3fba498; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:40:34.034Z.