F.S. Air Service Beech 18 accident
Beech 18 · Accident: propeller failure/malfunction during landing
From Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (ANC) to Fairbanks, AK
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC96LA096
- 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
Beech 18
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 18
- 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
- N700WA
- Operator
- FS Air Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (ANC), Anchorage, AKTo Fairbanks, 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 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
- Propeller failure/malfunction
- 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
- Propeller control › Malfunction
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During landing on the gravel airstrip, as the pilot placed the propellers into reverse, the airplane began to veer left. He applied right brake and continued to apply more reverse on the right engine. He was unable to control the airplane, and the airplane departed the left side of the airstrip and encountered brush and rough terrain. Examination of the engines revealed that a pin in the right engine propeller control unit, on which the propeller control cam slides, separated. The cockpit propeller control operates the control cam directly. Examination of the fracture surface of the pin disclosed that the pin failed in overload.
Probable cause
The malfunction of the propeller control unit on the right engine.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC96LA096
- Event ID
- 20001208X06135
- Case number
- ANC96LA096
- 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: bf4910ca2dd5e1ec7e28784a82a4a48c6626bd402f1040f2cff66010b6266834; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:48:58.553Z.