Stearns Air Alaska Cessna 206G accident
Cessna 206G · Accident: partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure) during initial climb
From Lake Hood Seaplane Base (LHD) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC96FA162
- 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
- 3 · 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 206G
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 206
- 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
- N7312C
- Operator
- Stearns Air Alaska
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lake Hood Seaplane Base (LHD), 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Utility pole
- 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
- Fuel injection control, linkage › Disengaged
- Fuel injection control, linkage › Scored
- Fuel injection control, linkage › Worn
- Maintenance, installation › Improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The aircraft (acft) took off from Lake Hood Seaplane Base with 5 occupants aboard. Witnesses said that after lift-off, flaps were retracted & acft pitched to a climb attitude; but stopped climbing & began settling, then struck a utility pole at the airport boundary. It then crashed on a road, & a fire erupted. Calculations showed acft was within allowable weight & balance parameters. Engine exam revealed brass throttle arm (PN 632555-23) was worn & had disconnected from the throttle linkage. It had disconnected where a hard steel bushing (with splines) had been installed (pressed) in a mounting hole in the relatively soft throttle arm. The mounting hole had become 'U' shaped with one side open. The opening was large enough to allow passage of the throttle linkage connecting bolt & bushing. Deposits of material from the throttle arm were found on the bushing splines. The deposits were consistent with rotational motion of the bushing within the mounting hole, as if rotation occurred while tightening the bolt. Teledyne Continental Service Bulletin SB95-2, dated 4/21/95, provided inspection & lubrication procedures for throttle linkages at each 100 hr, progressive, and/or annual inspection. Acft had been flown 80 hrs since its previous (annual) inspection on 8/11/96.
Probable cause
improper installation of a connecting bolt in the throttle linkage, which resulted in a worn/disconnected throttle arm, partial loss of engine power, and a forced landing after takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC96FA162
- Event ID
- 20001208X06649
- Case number
- ANC96FA162
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1996-09-24.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 6d7877d8cb67424d3791fa1e1a0b77c829496c52ff04c39a686c4aaefa657982; retrieved 2026-09-18T13:36:11.423Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N7312C; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.