NTSB CAROL · Event
Event ANC90FA158
Aircraft involved
Probable cause & findings
IMPROPER PLANNING/DECISION BY THE PILOT, AND HIS FAILURE TO FOLLOW IFR PROCEDURES AND MAINTAIN CLEARANCE FROM MOUNTAINOUS TERRAIN.
Factual narrative
THE PILOT RECEIVED A WEATHER BRIEFING AND FILED AN IFR FLIGHT PLAN FROM SITKA TO ANCHORAGE, ALASKA. DURING TAKEOFF FROM RUNWAY 11 AT SITKA, HE PROVIDED A PIREP TO THE FLIGHT SERVICE STATION, SAYING THAT HE HAD ENTERED THE CLOUD BASES AT 700 FT MSL. WHILE DEPARTING, A LEFT TURN WAS MADE, AND THE AIRPLANE CRASHED ON MOUNT VERSTOVIA AT THE 1420 FT LEVEL, APPROXIMATELY 3 MILES EAST OF THE AIRPORT. AN ON-SCENE INVESTIGATION REVEALED THE AIRPLANE STRUCK WOODED TERRAIN WHILE CLIMBING ON A HEADING OF 359 DEG. SEVERAL TREE LIMBS HAD BEEN CLEAN CUT (BY THE PROPELLERS); WRECKAGE WAS SPREAD OVER A 516 FT AREA. A STANDARD INSTRUMENT DEPARTURE (SITKA 5 SID) WAS AVAILABLE WHICH WOULD HAVE PROVIDED TERRAIN CLEARANCE WITH A RIGHT TURN-OUT FROM RUNWAY 11 TO AN INITIAL CLIMB HEADING OF 280 DEG. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database (Pre-2008 Archive) Retrieved: 2026-02-12
Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file
NTSB_1990_ANC90FA158.txt.
Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb.
Full investigation docket on
data.ntsb.gov ↗.
Beyond the agency record
Search this event elsewhere.
Pre-filled searches into the sources where news + community discussion of aviation events lives. External sources are reported, not agency. Treat them as signal that something happened, not as fact about what happened.
Entity-clustered aviation events in the press — last 24 hr + 30-day archive.
Official agency record + docket.
Investigative docket: factual reports, photos, transcripts.
Long-running aviation incident database (Flight Safety Foundation).
Community NTSB synthesis blog — often has photos and witness reports.
Gold-standard aviation incident blog.
Aviation industry news search.
GA pilot forum — informed but rumor-prone.
GA pilot subreddit search.
Tail-number page — flight history (free tier limited).
AOPA Air Safety Institute search.
Mainstream press coverage. Recent events only.
Privacy-preserving news search.
External links open in a new tab. We don't ingest their content; we deep-link search queries.
Related research
What the literature says.
Academic papers and agency reports matching this event's aircraft type. Sourced from NASA NTRS, NTSB Safety Studies, FAA CAMI, AOPA Air Safety Institute, Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons, arXiv, and the Semantic Scholar academic graph.
- Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons 2023 · Journal article (IJAAA)
Single Pilot Operations and Public Acceptance: A Mixed Methods Study conducted in Greece
The airline industry is moving towards Single Pilot Operations (SPO), as a result of the increased training and salary cost of pilots, and also as a remedy to the impending pilot shortage which is est…
- NASA NTRS 2019 · Conference Paper
Experimental water droplet impingement data on modern aircraft surfaces
An experimental method has been developed to determine the water droplet impingement characteristics on two- and three-dimensional aircraft surfaces.
Browse the full corpus — academia portal ↗