ANC98LA017 · Cessna 185E
Cessna 185E · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during landing
From Big Lake Airport (BGQ) to Merrill Field (MRI)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC98LA017
- 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
- General aviation
- 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 185E
- 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
- N4535F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Big Lake Airport (BGQ), Big Lake, AKTo Merrill Field (MRI)
- 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 91: General Aviation
- 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
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Landing gear, axle › Overload
- Miscellaneous, bolt/nut/fastener/clamp/spring › Stripped thread
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot landed the tailwheel-equipped airplane on a hard surface runway. The airplane was equipped with 29-inch tundra tires. During the landing roll, the left main landing gear wheel began to vibrate. The left wheel axle then broke, and the left wheel departed from the landing gear strut. The left wing tip struck the ground, and the airplane received damage to the left wing, left aileron, and the left elevator. The pilot stated the axle attaching bolts that secure the axle to the strut were stripped of their threads.
Probable cause
A separation of the axle from the landing gear strut due to overload, and stripping of the axle bolt threads.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC98LA017
- Event ID
- 20001211X09502
- Case number
- ANC98LA017
- 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: 3c40cb5882b970930cee00e2d20a954de929a524ffdc249a2a73939a5c563b98; retrieved 2026-09-22T18:01:06.196Z.