ANC24FA032 · Taylorcraft BC12-D
Taylorcraft BC12-D · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) en route
From Port Alsworth Airport (PTA) to Nondalton Airport (5NN)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC24FA032
- 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
- 2 · 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
Taylorcraft BC12-D
- Aircraft type
- Taylorcraft BC12
- 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
- N95744
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Port Alsworth Airport (PTA), Port Alsworth, AKTo Nondalton Airport (5NN), Nondalton, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 78 years (built 1946)
- 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
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- 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
On May 17, 2024, about 1145 Alaska daylight time, a wheel-equipped Taylorcraft BC12-D airplane, N95744, was substantially damaged when it was involved in an accident near Nondalton, Alaska. The pilot and passenger were fatally injured. The airplane was operated as a Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 flight. The uncertificated pilot, and his passenger, reportedly departed from the Port Alsworth Airport (PTA), Port Alsworth, Alaska, about 1130 and were traveling to the Nondalton Airport (5NN) Nondalton. The community of Nondalton is located on the western shoreline of Six Mile Lake. About 2000, the airplane was reported overdue. A search was initiated, and the airplane wreckage was eventually located at about 2130 about two to three miles southeast of 5NN. The partially submerged wreckage was situated in a shallow portion of Six Mile Lake, and approximately 200 yards from the shore. On May 22, the airplane wreckage was recovered from the water, and it was transported back to PTA. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigator-in-charge traveled to Port Alsworth to conduct a post-accident wreckage examination, and no preaccident mechanical anomalies were found. The airplane’s lower fuselage, belly, and main landing gear sustained significant damage, which is consistent with a high-speed collision with the water. See figure 1.
Figure 1. Accident airplane in Six Mile Lake during recovery. Photo provided by recovery crew. Witnesses in the area reported low clouds, fog, and reduced visibility along the accident airplane’s anticipated flight route between Port Alsworth and Nondalton about the time of the accident. A detailed NTSB study of meteorological conditions at the time of the accident is pending. According to acquaintances, the airplane had recently been purchased by the accident pilot. According to the Federal Aviation Administration, neither the pilot/airplane owner, nor his passenger, possessed a pilot certificate, and neither had an FAA medical certificate (student pilot certificate). To date, the accident airplane’s maintenance logbooks could not be located.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC24FA032
- Event ID
- 20240518194279
- Case number
- ANC24FA032
- 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: 1396334c2b95012b34507addb0051ae09878b658147f276c916f3602c43bb398; retrieved 2026-09-15T08:14:46.577Z.