Cape Smythe Air Service Flight 270
Piper PA-31-350 · Incident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Bob Baker Memorial Airport (IAN) to Ralph Wien Memorial Airport (OTZ)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC97IA035
- 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
- Incident
- 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
Piper PA-31-350
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-31
- 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
- N3542H
- Operator
- Cape Smythe Air Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bob Baker Memorial Airport (IAN), KIANA, AKTo Ralph Wien Memorial Airport (OTZ)
- 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
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Minor
Cause areas
- Door, landing gear › Binding(mechanical)
- Landing gear, main gear › Jammed
- Manufacturer › Acft/equip, inadequate aircraft component
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was landed with the landing gear retracted because the pilot was unable to lower the left main landing gear, although the nose gear and the right main landing gear would extend and lock properly. Postaccident inspection disclosed a fractured left main landing gear door hinge. The door hinge was the new, improved, version of an older hinge which had a history of cracking in the radius of the hinge. The hinge on the incident airplane was a replacement hinge mandated by an airworthiness directive. The replacement hinge also fractured in the radius. A review of Service Difficulty Reports disclosed at least eight other instances of cracks in the new hinge.
Probable cause
the jammed main landing gear which was caused by a binding main landing gear door with a broken hinge. The fractured, inadequate main landing gear door hinge was also causal.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC97IA035
- Event ID
- 20001208X07469
- Case number
- ANC97IA035
- 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: 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: 31c6965d57dfc57b3e8358bafffebf8f209413f0e84cdb2b367026a40d490cbf; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:41:01.166Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N3542H; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, CSAA.