ANC96LA017 · Cessna 207
Cessna 207 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Bethel Airport (BET) to Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (ANC)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC96LA017
- 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
- 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
Cessna 207
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 207
- 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
- N70076
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bethel Airport (BET), Bethel, 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 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Engine assembly, bearing › Shifted
- Engine assembly, crankcase › Fatigue
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During cruise flight, the pilot noted a loss in engine RPM and oil pressure at the same time. He performed an emergency landing on a frozen lake. During the landing roll, the right wingtip struck a spruce tree, and the airplane was substantially damaged. During an examination, the accessory section of the engine did not rotate, when the propeller was turned by hand. A teardown of the engine revealed that the crankshaft was fractured at the number 3 short cheek, between the number 2 rod bearing and the number 2 main bearing. The engine contained numerous fragments from the number 2 main bearing. The number 2 bearing saddle was severely worn and deformed. Other bearing saddles exhibited scoring. A metallurgical examination of the crankshaft revealed a fatigue failure at the aft radius of the number 2 main bearing journal adjacent to heavy rubbing marks from the number 2 main bearing.
Probable cause
fatigue failure of the engine crankshaft at the number 2 main bearing journal, where rubbing contact had occurred with the number 2 main bearing. A factor relating to the accident was: the lack of suitable terrain for an emergency landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC96LA017
- Event ID
- 20001207X04800
- Case number
- ANC96LA017
- 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: bc8166765020d11d0b97bcfd3d15c78c435f749053c707e6951ad62e5ee5d026; retrieved 2026-09-22T23:02:03.704Z.