ANC96LA107 · Cessna 185
Cessna 185 · Accident: on ground/water collision with terrain/water during takeoff
From an unrecorded airport to TKN · Talkeetna, AK
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC96LA107
- 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
- N70018
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo TKN · Talkeetna, 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
- Takeoff · rejected takeoff
- 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
- On ground/water collision with terrain/water
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Unsuitable terrain or takeoff/landing/taxi area, selected
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The takeoff area was on a mountain glacier at 5,700 feet mean sea level, and was about 2,500 feet long and sloped downhill. The snow condition was wet and dense. The pilot reported that the engine was producing full power during the downslope takeoff. When the pilot began to lift off, the engine momentarily lost power and surged about 3 times from full power to almost no power. The pilot turned on the fuel boost pump, but full power was not restored. The airplane settled onto snow covered terrain and then collided with the edge of a crevasse. A national park ranger reported that the ski tracks produced by the accident airplane extended approximately 4,000 feet along the surface of the snow before leaving the surface at the edge of a crevasse. About 50 yards beyond the crevasse, additional ski tracks were noted skipping on the snow surface until the point of rest at the accident crevasse. An FAA inspector conducted an examination of the accident airplane's engine and fuel system. He reported that the engine ran normally with no observed discrepancies.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight planning for departure and his selection of unsuitable terrain. Factors in the accident were soft, snow covered terrain and the pilot's delay in aborting the takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC96LA107
- Event ID
- 20001208X06142
- Case number
- ANC96LA107
- 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: 3a53566d64d65aace6e03117b8a24061f2582e520cde14a612539c3b68cced7e; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:48:25.743Z.