ANC19FA029 · Maule M6 235
Maule M6 235 · Accident: abrupt maneuver while maneuvering
From Seward, AK to Anchorage, AK
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC19FA029
- 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
- 3 · 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
Maule M6 235
- Aircraft type
- Maule M6
- 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
- N56512
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Seward, AKTo Anchorage, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 36 years (built 1983)
- 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
- Maneuvering · low-altitude flying
- 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
- Abrupt maneuver
- 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 › Psychological
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was conducting a personal flight with three passengers aboard. The flight encountered an area of deteriorating visibility due to smoke from a wildfire burning in the area, and the pilot was attempting to follow a highway through mountainous terrain. The pilot-rated passenger stated that, as the flight progressed, forward visibility deteriorated and was "not very good at all"; she was able to see outside the cockpit only straight down. Further, a witness near the accident site reported 1/4 miles visibility about the time of the accident. The pilot-rated passenger stated that the pilot seemed stressed due to the deteriorating conditions and that the airplane occupants discussed locating an alternate destination. The airplane then entered an unusual attitude, and one passenger began yelling, "pull-up, pull-up" to which the pilot responded, "I've got this." The pilot-rated passenger's last recollection of the flight was the airplane entering an aerodynamic stall.
GPS data from the accident flight revealed that, about 2 minutes before the accident, the airplane made about a 180° right turn and began a descent to a GPS altitude of 1,235 ft, followed by a left turn to a northerly heading and a climb to a GPS altitude of 2,032 ft and a groundspeed of 37 knots. The last recorded in-flight data point showed that the airplane was at a GPS altitude of 1,587 ft and at a 0- knot groundspeed.
The on-scene examination revealed no evidence of mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. The observed damage to the airplane indicated that it impacted the ground in a nose-down, near-vertical attitude, consistent with an aerodynamic stall. Given the passenger's account and GPS data, it is likely that, due to the restricted visibility conditions, the pilot became geographically disoriented, which resulted in the airplane's flight path toward rising terrain. It is also likely that the pilot subsequently initiated a sudden climb, during which the airplane's critical angle of attack was exceeded, resulting in an aerodynamic stall and impact with terrain.
Probable cause
The pilot's geographic disorientation and his exceedance of the airplane's critical angle of attack while maneuvering to avoid mountainous terrain, resulting in an aerodynamic stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC19FA029
- Event ID
- 20190629X71525
- Case number
- ANC19FA029
- 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. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2019-06-29.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 167cfd7444d00222063427e9c3bed7dfdb0a6d189aff637bc5d3031b36cf1ccf; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:00:47.898Z.