ANC96TA075 · Cessna A-185-F
National Park Service Cessna A-185-F · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Gustavus Airport (GST) to Juneau International Airport (JNU)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC96TA075
- 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 A-185-F
- Aircraft type
- Cessna A-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
- N56581
- Operator
- National Park Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Gustavus Airport (GST), GUSTAVUS, 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 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Loss of control on ground/water
- 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 was landing a tailwheel airplane modified with over size 'Tundra' tires on a hard surfaced runway. He observed a crosswind from the right during the landing flare, and attempted to correct for the airplane's drift by placing the upwind (right) tire on the runway first. The airplane touched down on the right main tire first, and the pilot said he felt some drift, and then the airplane veering to the left. The right wing subsequently scraped the runway before the pilot was able to bring the airplane to a stop. Damage was observed to the right wing, and the right main tire was flat. Postaccident inspection of the right wheel assembly disclosed no evidence of preaccident mechanical anomaly. The pilot wrote in his statement that the accident could have been prevented by the use of better crosswind techniques.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate compensation for the wind conditions. A factor associated with the accident was the crosswind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC96TA075
- Event ID
- 20001208X05693
- Case number
- ANC96TA075
- 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: 0abe9799d773d623a86ab8d14cefa114f24323e97574ac0232887b2f0ccbffc4; retrieved 2026-09-22T22:28:13.849Z.