ANC26FA077 · Piper PA22 150
Piper PA22 150 · Accident during landing
From Mc Carthy Airport (15Z) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC26FA077
- 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
- Ongoing
- API-reported fatalities
- 3 · 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
- N4535A
- Operator
- Jason Lobo
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mc Carthy Airport (15Z), McCarthy, AKTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 70 years (built 1956)
- 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
- Landing
- 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
- Unknown or undetermined
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On July 27, 2026, about 2130 Alaska daylight time, a deregistered Piper PA-22-150 airplane, N4535A, was destroyed when it was involved in an accident near Chitina, Alaska. The pilot and two passengers were fatally injured. The airplane was operated as a Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 personal flight. According to witnesses, the pilot and two passengers departed McCarthy Airport, McCarthy, Alaska, to drop off the passengers and supplies at the upper Dan Creek airstrip, located about 12 miles southeast of McCarthy. The upper Dan Creek airstrip is an uncharted private strip that is generally considered one way in and out, surrounded by steeply rising terrain, and go-arounds are not recommended. Multiple witnesses, located on the ground in the vicinity of the airstrip, reported hearing the airplane approaching the southeast runway for landing at a normal approach power setting. The witnesses stated that they then heard the airplane’s engine increase to a high-power setting, then there was a moment of silence, followed by the sound of an impact.
The airplane impacted a berm on a rock-covered riverbank in a left-wing-low flight attitude about 740 ft north of the airstrip. The wreckage was oriented on a northwest heading. All four corners of the airplane were accounted for at the accident site. The outboard portion of the left wing was bent downwards and aft. The fuselage, inboard left wing, and portions of the inboard right wing were consumed by a postimpact fire. During the onsite investigation, no preimpact anomalies were visually observed with the flight control system. The fuel selector was positioned on the left tank, and 100LL aviation fuel was present in the left wing. The throttle was found in the idle position and was bent in the direction of the pilot. The propeller blades exhibited rotational signatures including leading edge tip damage and chordwise witness marks, indicative of operation at a low-power setting upon impact. The engine has been recovered to a secure facility for further examination.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC26FA077
- Event ID
- 20260728203476
- Case number
- ANC26FA077
- 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 2026-07-28.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 3615b9d32f160d92657faf3ab6374f714cb877b3e23b1720f8727ab53c794c1d; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:18:58.909Z.