Taquan Air Cessna 185 accident
Cessna 185 · Accident: dragged wing, rotor, pod, float or tail/skid during landing
From Ketchikan International Airport (KTN) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC94LA067
- 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
- N4471R
- Operator
- Taquan Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ketchikan International Airport (KTN), Ketchikan, AKTo not recorded
- 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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
- Dragged wing, rotor, pod, float or tail/skid
- 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
- Pilot in command › Compensation for wind conditions, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PILOT LANDED THE AIRPLANE PARALLEL TO THE SWELLS AND AS IT SLOWED DOWN, IT WEATHERVANED INTO THE WIND. THE AIRPLANE'S NOSE PITCHED UP AND ACCORDING TO THE PILOT, A GUST OF WIND HIT THE AIRPLANE. THE LEFT WING, THE DOWNWIND WING, STRUCK THE WATER. THE SWELLS WERE ESTIMATED TO BE 1 TO 2 FEET AND THE WIND WAS FROM THE SOUTHEAST AT 10 KNOTS WITH GUSTS TO 20 KNOTS.
Probable cause
THE PILOT'S INADEQUATE COMPENSATION FOR THE WIND. FACTORS WERE THE ROUGH WATER AND THE GUSTY WIND CONDITION.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC94LA067
- Event ID
- 20001206X01418
- Case number
- ANC94LA067
- 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: 28c638d7c5b95e260f8fa6a873ca54dffe0440ee4dd8b2c0d48a107676ca834e; retrieved 2026-09-18T18:15:18.274Z.