Ward Air Cessna 185 accident
Cessna 185 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) on approach
From HAWK INLET, AK to Juneau International Airport (JNU)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC99LA052
- 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
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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
Cessna 185
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 185
- 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
- N93311
- Operator
- Ward Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From HAWK INLET, AKTo Juneau International Airport (JNU)
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- 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
- Fuel system, pump › Inoperative
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The amphibious airplane was about 300 feet above the ground, on short final to land on the runway, when the engine quit. The airplane landed in soft mud with the wheels extended, and flipped over. Postaccident examination revealed fuel in both wing tanks. Bench testing revealed the engine driven fuel pump would not pump fuel, and drew air into the pump when primed and operated. Disassembly did not reveal any blockages, damaged seals, or sources of the air leak.
Probable cause
The failure of the engine driven fuel pump for undetermined reasons. Factors associated with this accident were the low altitude at which the failure occurred resulting in task overload of the pilot, and landing the amphibious airplane in the swampy terrain short of the runway with the wheels extended.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC99LA052
- Event ID
- 20001205X00410
- Case number
- ANC99LA052
- 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. 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: f73d0b67a7324c570cb731587743560971baba8feb42f8710e703f3a278a882d; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:56:57.600Z.