Northern Thunderbird Air Flight 202
Beechcraft Super King Air 200 · Controlled flight into terrain
From Vancouver International Airport (YVR) to Smithers Airport, Canada
Event
- 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
- Event fatalities
- 2 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- Occupants
- Unknown
- Survivors
- 0
- InjuriesFatal: death within 30 days. Serious: over 48 hours in hospital within a week, most broken bones, severe bleeding, nerve or organ damage, or serious burns. Minor: anything less. Glossary
- 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
- Airline
Beechcraft Super King Air 200
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft Super King AIR-200
- Category
- Airplane · from aircraft type
- 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
- C-FCGL
- Operator
- Northern Thunderbird Air
- Onboard fatalities
- 2
- Route
- From Vancouver International Airport (YVR)To Smithers Airport, Canada
Cause areas
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Experience/knowledge
- Organizational issues › Development
From the investigation findings the Wikipedia article reports, sorted into the NTSB's cause areas with AI assistance.
Not plotted · Not plotted: the Wikipedia article gives no coordinates, and its site names no town or airport that matches exactly.
From the Wikipedia article
Northern Thunderbird Air Flight 202 (flight number ICAO: NTA202, IATA: NT202, callsign: THUNDERBIRD 202) was a positioning flight of Northern Thunderbird Air on 28 July 2005. On this flight, a Beechcraft Super King Air 200 business aircraft crashed in a narrow mountain gorge. Both pilots, the only occupants, were killed in the accident.
Accident sequence
The aircraft took off from Vancouver Airport at 08:24. The flight to Smithers Airport was to be conducted as a visual flight. The aircraft did not arrive at its destination and a search was then initiated. The wreckage of the Beechcraft was discovered two days later, on 30 July 2005, in a narrow mountain gorge. The accident site was located at an altitude of 3,900 feet above sea level on a steeply rising slope. Both pilots had been killed; a fire that broke out after the accident had almost completely destroyed the wreckage. The fire had also destroyed the emergency locator beacon, which is why the aircraft could not be located.
Investigation and cause
Cause
The cause of the accident was determined to be the flying of the aircraft into a narrow, steeply rising mountain gorge. The aircraft's climb performance had not been sufficient for the steep terrain, and the latter had moreover made it impossible to turn back. Why the pilots had flown into the gorge could not be determined. The pilots had not been trained in dealing with such unique hazards, nor had they been taught special operating procedures for flying over mountainous terrain. The information in the operations manual regarding visual flights had been inadequate – it essentially consisted of the note that obstacles were to be overflown with a clearance of 500 feet.
Translated into English with AI assistance from the German Wikipedia article “Northern-Thunderbird-Air-Flug 202” (revision 237184031, retrieved 2026-09-19) by its authors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Extracted as plain text: references, tables, images and some sections are left out; the translation may contain errors, and long articles were cut to their first 700 words. Read the article
Sources
German Wikipedia article: Northern-Thunderbird-Air-Flug 202
- Translation
- Into English with AI assistance; names of linked operators and aircraft types from Wikidata. It may contain errors.
- Revision
- 237184031 · 2023-09-10 · retrieved 2026-09-19
- Wikidata
- Q108543149
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
Where each value comes from
- Record
- de Wikipedia article "Northern-Thunderbird-Air-Flug 202" (page 11916487, revision 237184031), translated into English with AI assistance
- Date
- Wikipedia infobox: date
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site
- Map position
- none
- Aircraft, operator and route
- Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports)
- Operation
- flight number in the article title
- Fatalities
- Wikipedia infobox: aircraft fatalities
- Ground fatalities
- not stated in the Wikipedia infobox
- Summary
- Wikipedia article lead
Source notes (1)
- Wikipedia · Facts from the German Wikipedia article's infobox, translated into English with AI assistance, not checked against an investigation report. Independent review pending.