Alaska Air Group Flight 82
McDonnell Douglas MD-82 · Incident: airframe, component or system failure during takeoff
From Fairbanks International Airport (FAI) to Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (ANC)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC99IA027
- 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
- Incident
- 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
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- 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
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
McDonnell Douglas MD-82
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas MD-82
- 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
- N934AS
- Operator
- Alaska Air Group
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fairbanks International Airport (FAI), Fairbanks, AKTo Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (ANC), Anchorage, 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 121: Air Carrier
- 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
- Takeoff · roll/run
- First occurrenceThe 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- None
Cause areas
- Weather condition › Temperature extremes
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The crew of a McDonnell Douglas MD-82 airplane, reported a partial flight control malfunction during takeoff. The captain stated that during the takeoff roll, the airplane's nose failed to rise as he applied aft control yoke pressure. When he applied an excessive amount of aft control yoke pressure, the nose rotated slowly, and the airplane assumed the desired pitch angle for takeoff. Prior to the incident flight, the incident airplane remained parked outside, overnight. During the night the air temperature went below minus 50 degrees F. Following the incident, the airplane underwent an extensive inspection and evaluation of the flight control system, with no flight control anomalies discovered by company maintenance personnel. The NTSB's FDR readout showed that during the initial phase of the incident takeoff roll, both elevators remained in a down position. As the takeoff roll progressed and the airspeed approached 150 knots, both elevators responded to the pilot's control column inputs, and the nose of the airplane rotated. The pilot's control column position was not a recorded parameter of the incident airplane’s FDR.
Probable cause
The restricted/delayed movement of the elevator flight control due to extremely cold weather conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC99IA027
- Event ID
- 20001205X00119
- Case number
- ANC99IA027
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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: investigation status, coordinates, damage. 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.
- API snapshot SHA-256: f852b24d633fe111c6dbd30765f4ab8c0bc420185d7e3af530822f6f1ff385ce; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:59:50.039Z.