JuniPogo Piper PA31 350 accident
Piper PA31 350 · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) on approach
From Deadhorse Airport (PASC) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC23LA036
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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
Piper PA31 350
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA31
- 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
- N34WM
- Operator
- JuniPogo
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Deadhorse Airport (PASC), Deadhorse, AKTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 50 years (built 1973)
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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 · IFR final approach
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Task performance
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 while established on an RNAV GPS instrument approach to a remote airport, flat light conditions made it difficult to discern topographical features of the snow-covered terrain below. Prior to reaching the decision height altitude, the pilot said he looked outside for the runway environment, but the flat light condition caused him to spend more time looking outside and he became disorientated. When he looked back at the airplane’s instruments, he noticed the airplane was below the glide path and initiated a go-around maneuver; however, the airplane subsequently impacted snow-covered terrain. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inadvertent descent below the published minimum descent altitude, while operating in flat light conditions, which resulted in controlled flight into terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC23LA036
- Event ID
- 20230522192218
- Case number
- ANC23LA036
- 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: 7d18fba0aad56a152825b8f97587d576d621269401ea7488b9d9cd51b983feaa; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:37:47.809Z.