ANC19FA042 · Piper PA22-150
Piper PA22-150 · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) while maneuvering
From Girdwood, AK to Girdwood, AK
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC19FA042
- 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
- 4 · 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 PA22-150
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA22
- 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
- N7402D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Girdwood, AKTo Girdwood, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 62 years (built 1957)
- 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
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Personnel issues › Physical
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airline transport pilot was conducting a local flight with three passengers over an area that comprised remote, mountainous terrain. One witness saw the airplane performing aggressive maneuvers earlier in the flight, and observed the airplane approached a ridge, its nose pitched up and the airplane entered a steep climb before disappearing from view. Multiple witnesses saw the airplane flying parallel to a mountain ridge before it entered a turn and began a descent. The airplane then disappeared from view followed by a plume of black smoke. None of the witnesses reported hearing any unusual sounds from the accident airplane before the accident.
Toxicological testing of the pilot detected 0.226 gm/dl ethanol in the femoral blood, which is greater than 5.5 times the regulatory limit for pilots. The concentration of ethanol in the pilot's vitreous fluid compared to femoral blood was consistent with the recent ingestion of alcohol. It is likely that at these levels the pilot experienced not only degradation of judgment, but mood and behavioral changes, altered perception of the environment, and deficits in coordination, psychomotor skills, and attention.
Although the airplane was not recovered from the accident site and could not be examined, the circumstances of the accident are consistent with the pilot's failure to maintain clearance from terrain while maneuvering due to the impairing effects of his recent alcohol consumption.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance from terrain due to his impairment from alcohol consumption.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC19FA042
- Event ID
- 20190805X82045
- Case number
- ANC19FA042
- 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 2019-08-05.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 22f2d7967531eaad0e0f3b67d8969cf7261f626c798564d6e4b1170d2d78cf9c; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:02:50.719Z.