ANC98IA026 · Boeing 737-205
Arco Alaska Boeing 737-205 · Incident: airframe, component or system failure while standing
From PUO · Prudhoe Bay, AK to Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (ANC)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC98IA026
- 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
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Unknown
Boeing 737-205
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 737
- 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
- N733AR
- Operator
- Arco Alaska
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From PUO · Prudhoe Bay, AKTo Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (ANC), AK
- 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
- Standing
- 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
- None
Cause areas
- Flt control syst, yaw damper › Dynamic imbalance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During parking at the gate, the airplane's rudder began a rapid rudder oscillation which shook the entire airplane. Postincident testing determined that the rudder was oscillating approximately 1.5 degrees either side of centerline, solely within the authority of the yaw damper. No corresponding cockpit rudder pedal movement occurred. Further testing revealed a loss of grease to the yaw rate gyro spin bearings, and corresponding damage to the spin and gimbal bearings. The yaw damp coupler and gyro had accumulated 24,850 hours in service.
Probable cause
The dynamic imbalance in the yaw rate gyro, which provided input to the yaw damper and rudder. A factor was the deteriorated grease in the gyro bearings.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC98IA026
- Event ID
- 20001211X09616
- Case number
- ANC98IA026
- 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, damage. 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: 6c2668df32922c6a46c9942b04432f0dbe76475e23e09d97cfdee66ec8cfc147; retrieved 2026-09-22T17:59:27.205Z.