Copper Valley Air Service Cessna U206C accident
Cessna U206C · Accident: fuel starvation on approach
From Gulkana Airport (GKN) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC25LA078
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Cessna U206C
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 206
- 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
- N29110
- Operator
- Copper Valley Air Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Gulkana Airport (GKN), Glennallen, AKTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 57 years (built 1968)
- 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 · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Fuel starvation
- 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- 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 on short final, the engine lost all power. The pilot switched fuel tanks and activated the fuel boost pump; however, engine power was not restored. The airplane subsequently touched down about 100 ft short of the runway approach threshold and nosed over, which resulted in substantial damage to the fuselage and vertical stabilizer. A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the left fuel tank was empty, and the right fuel tank was full; no anomalies were discovered with the fuel selector. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. The operator stated that the accident could have been prevented with the proper use of the prelanding checklist.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inadequate fuel management, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC25LA078
- Event ID
- 20250725200630
- Case number
- ANC25LA078
- 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, coordinates, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2025-07-25.
- API snapshot SHA-256: d08613c78cc606173793ae03224841f17ede4e9880fe759b183a30e97b74cc3c; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:08:11.389Z.