ANC18TA070 · Cessna U206 A
Cessna U206 A · Accident: loss of visual reference on approach
From Willow Airport (UUO) to Willow Airport (UUO)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC18TA070
- 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
- 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
Cessna U206 A
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 206
- 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
- N8070Z
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Willow Airport (UUO), Willow, AKTo Willow Airport (UUO), Willow, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 53 years (built 1965)
- 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 pattern crosswind
- 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
- Loss of visual reference
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A flight instructor and a private pilot receiving instruction departed on a night training flight. The pilot had recently obtained her private pilot certificate without night training time under a regulatory exception for Alaska pilots. The accident flight was her first night flight. After performing one night landing and takeoff at the accident airport, the pilot receiving instruction performed a right turn to the crosswind leg at pattern altitude. The instructor, who was in the right seat, then exclaimed "what is up with your attitude?" The instructor took control of the airplane after he realized that the airplane was descending and the pilot receiving instruction was disoriented; however, the airplane impacted terrain shortly after. Both pilots stated that it was a dark, moonless night with no visible horizon in the vicinity of the remote airport. The pilot receiving instruction reported no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation of the airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot receiving instruction's failure to maintain control during a night landing pattern crosswind turn due to spatial disorientation and the flight instructor's inadequate supervision and delayed remedial action, which resulted in impact with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC18TA070
- Event ID
- 20180909X91039
- Case number
- ANC18TA070
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2018-09-09.
- API snapshot SHA-256: dbc8fc5f071c90527b310c6fd0160a808ee9ca56f57f3dfcbcc6c408aee59366; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:13:38.057Z.