Hageland Aviation Services Flight 916
Cessna 402C · Accident: nose gear collapsed during landing
From Point Hope Airport (PHO) to Kivalina Airport (KVL)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC97LA150
- 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 402C
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 402
- 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
- N2649Z
- Operator
- Hageland Aviation Services
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Point Hope Airport (PHO), Point Hope, AKTo Kivalina Airport (KVL)
- 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
- Nose gear collapsed
- 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
- Landing gear, nose gear attach point › Fractured
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that after placing the landing gear handle in the down position, he observed 3 green, down and locked, indicator lights. He indicated that the touchdown on the gravel runway was normal, and that as he slowed the airplane, the airplane settled onto its nose. Metallurgical inspection revealed overstress fractures of the nose gear actuator upper attachment lug, and overstress fractures of the supporting sheet metal structure. No preexisting defects were noted. No reports were received of previous hard landings. An inspection of the drag link assembly was conducted 45 hours prior to the accident, and no discrepancies regarding the nose landing gear were noted at that time.
Probable cause
An overstress fracture of the nose landing gear attachment. A factor associated with the accident was the rough landing area.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC97LA150
- Event ID
- 20001208X08772
- Case number
- ANC97LA150
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1997-09-15.
- API snapshot SHA-256: bef90c25440aeef697bedd8cad71544198d62fe9ccfa1be947bd6319cd2b03f3; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:22:49.895Z.