ANC21LA043 · Cessna 182K K
Cessna 182K K · Accident: windshear or thunderstorm en route
From Talkeetna, AK to Yakutat, AK
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC21LA043
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 182K K
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N2761Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Talkeetna, AKTo Yakutat, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 54 years (built 1967)
- 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 · cruise
- 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
- Windshear or thunderstorm
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, before departure, he reviewed weather conditions and proposed destination locations, which included winds aloft and METARs. About 2 hours and 15 minutes into the flight, at an altitude of about 12,500 mean sea level (msl), the airplane encountered severe turbulence and windshear, and, shortly thereafter, a downdraft. Unable to escape the downdraft, the pilot attempted to level the wings and pitched up. The airplane impacted mountainous terrain, resulting in substantial damage to the fuselage, wings, left horizontal stabilizer, and elevator. The pilot reported no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions that would have precluded normal operation.
Review of weather information revealed a relatively strong pressure gradient in the area. Upper air soundings indicated favorable conditions for severe mountain wave conditions with updraft and downdraft speeds between 2,000 and 3,000 ft per minute. Based on the available information, it is likely that the flight encountered mountain wave conditions, including severe turbulence, windshear, and downdrafts greater than 2,000 ft per minute, which exceeded the climb capability of the airplane and resulted in descent into terrain.
Probable cause
An encounter with mountain wave turbulence and windshear that exceeded the climb capability of the airplane and resulted in impact with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC21LA043
- Event ID
- 20210601103184
- Case number
- ANC21LA043
- 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, coordinates, cause areas. 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: 80a6c527fbb20730c31704f3aa4a6c6d21258e0b66b0a653d1fd60b2def9fc90; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:06:38.911Z.