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Olson Air Service Cessna 207 accident

3 Apr 1997 · TELLER, AK, United States

Cessna 207 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather on approach

From Nome Airport (OME) to Stro's Airport (AK54)

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Event

NTSB case
ANC97LA047
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 207

Aircraft type
Cessna 207
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
N6299H
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Nome Airport (OME), Nome, AKTo Stro's Airport (AK54)
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
Approach · VFR pattern final
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
In flight encounter with weather
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
  • Pilot in command › Directional control, not maintained

Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

The pilot and 6 passengers were landing at a remote airport at the completion of a Title 14 CFR Part 135 commuter flight. A village agent reported the surface wind condition as 15 kts from the south. The pilot observed blowing snow across the runway surface, and estimated the wind was between 30 and 35 kts. He also indicated that downdraft conditions existed at the airport. About 1/2 mile from the threshold of the runway, the pilot selected 20 degrees of flap, lowered the right wing, and began to maintain runway alignment by application of nearly all of the available rudder travel. About 25 feet above the ground, the pilot applied full power to counteract an increasing sink rate. The rudder was already deflected to full travel, and the pilot decided to go-around. He raised the nose of the airplane and retracted the flaps, first to a flap up position, and then to a 10 degree setting. The airplane continued to descend, and touched down to the left of the runway centerline, about 800 feet beyond the landing threshold. The surface of the runway was rutted from previously melted snow and ice. The airplane departed off the left edge of the runway, and the nose wheel dug into soft snow. The airplane then nosed over.

Probable cause

the pilot's inadequate compensation for wind conditions, and failure to maintain directional control during the landing. Factors related to the accident were: a crosswind, a downdraft, the pilot's delayed go-around, improper raising of the flaps, and inadvertent touchdown during the attempt to go around.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record ANC97LA047
Event ID
20001208X07639
Case number
ANC97LA047
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: cc2578956180328ecaffd56c4f8d595af30e73918141c14c3e134229b21847df; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:40:03.605Z.