C-123 crash in Denali
All West Freight Fairchild C-123K · Crew error
From Wolf Lake Airport (4AK6) to Unalakleet Airport (PAUN)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC10FA067
- 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
- 3 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- Occupants
- Unknown
- Survivors
- Unknown
- 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
- 0 serious · 0 minor (NTSB)
- 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
Fairchild C-123K
- Aircraft type
- Fairchild C-123
- 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
- N709RR
- Operator
- All West Freight
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wolf Lake Airport (4AK6), Palmer, AKTo Unalakleet Airport (PAUN), Unalakleet, AK
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- Maneuvering · low-altitude flying
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
From the Wikipedia article
The C-123 crash in Denali was an aviation accident involving a Fairchild C-123K Provider transport aircraft that occurred on Sunday, 1 August 2010 near Denali National Park (Alaska); 3 people died in the crash.
Crash
The aircraft was operating a cargo flight carrying a generator from Palmer to Unalakleet, with two pilots and one passenger on board. The 61-year-old aircraft commander had two thousand flight hours. The flight was to be conducted under visual flight rules; the crew did not file a flight plan and did not contact a controller at any time during the flight. Witnesses in the area of Denali Park, which is much further north than the presumed flight route, described a khaki-coloured propeller aircraft with a straight wing and a flat bottom, which flew over the valley at low speed. Then the airliner suddenly soared upward, as a result of which it lost speed, after which it lowered its nose and went down, and at about 15 hours it crashed into the southern slope of Healy Mountain, near the boundary of Denali Park, and exploded. All three people on board died.
Investigation and cause
Causes
Among the witnesses were two pilots, who noted that before the collision the engines were running normally and the landing gear was retracted. One of the pilots had also previously worked on the C-123 in the army and noted that even if one of the engines had failed, the crew could have used the jet booster located on that side to compensate for the moment. Inspection and examination of the wreckage found no signs of malfunction or failure of the aircraft's systems, nor of a shift of cargo, which could also have led to a loss of stability. In addition, no messages about problems on board were transmitted from the aircraft, and the jet boosters were found unused. On the basis of these data the National Transportation Safety Board came to the opinion that the crash occurred due to low speed, resulting in a stall with a significant loss of height, after which, finding itself at a dangerously low height above the terrain, the aircraft struck trees. The commission named as responsible for the crash the pilot, who allowed the speed to fall below the critical value, as a result of which the aircraft went out of control and struck the ground.
Translated into English with AI assistance from the Russian Wikipedia article “Катастрофа C-123 в Денали” (revision 150407370, 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
NTSB narrative
The pilot, co-pilot and the passenger departed on a day VFR cross country flight in a large, 1950's era former military transport category airplane to deliver cargo. The pilot did not file a flight plan, and had no communication with any air traffic control facility during the flight.
While en route, witnesses saw the airplane fly slowly across a valley near the entrance of a national park, which was not the intended route of flight. The airplane suddenly pitched up, stalled, and dived into wooded terrain within the park. Two pilot-rated witnesses said the engines were operating at the time of the accident, and the landing gear was retracted.
An on-scene examination of the burned airplane structure and engines revealed no evidence of any preaccident mechanical deficiencies, or any evidence that the cargo had shifted during the flight.
A former military pilot who had experience in the accident type airplane, stated that the airplane was considered unrecoverable from a stall, and for that reason, pilots did not typically practice stalls in it. He also indicated that if a problem was encountered with one of the two piston engines on the airplane, the auxiliary jet engine on the affected side should be started to provide additional thrust.
Given the lack of mechanical deficiencies discovered during postaccident inspection, the absence of any distress communications, and the fact that neither of the two auxiliary jet engines had been started to assist in the event of a piston engine malfunction, it is likely the pilot allowed the airplane to lose airspeed and enter a low altitude stall from which he was unable to recover.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate airspeed to avoid a low altitude stall, resulting in a loss of control and collision with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
Russian Wikipedia article: Катастрофа C-123 в Денали
- Article
- Катастрофа C-123 в Денали
- Translation
- Into English with AI assistance; names of linked operators and aircraft types from Wikidata. It may contain errors.
- Revision
- 150407370 · 2025-12-02 · retrieved 2026-09-19
- Wikidata
- Q18409071
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record ANC10FA067
- Event ID
- 20100805X73225
- Case number
- ANC10FA067
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Where each value comes from
- Record
- ru Wikipedia article "Катастрофа C-123 в Денали" (page 5269178, revision 150407370), translated into English with AI assistance; merged with NTSB case ANC10FA067 (events / aircraft)
- Date
- NTSB record ANC10FA067: NTSB narrative opening date, consistent with the API date and time (local date)
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from NTSB record ANC10FA067
- Map position
- NTSB record ANC10FA067: events decimal coordinates
- Aircraft, operator and route
- NTSB record ANC10FA067: aircraft; gaps from Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports)
- Operation
- NTSB record ANC10FA067: operated under Part 91: General Aviation
- Fatalities
- NTSB record ANC10FA067: NTSB API totalFatal
- Ground fatalities
- NTSB record ANC10FA067: events.inj_f_grnd
- Summary
- Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (3)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "C-123 crash in Denali" and NTSB case ANC10FA067, matched by the same aircraft registration and date. For this US event the NTSB's values are used where the two differ; each value names its source.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. 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.