Yute Air Alaska Cessna 207 accident
Cessna 207 · Accident: in flight collision with object during takeoff
From AQH to Bethel Airport (BET)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC98LA056
- 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
- N755AB
- Operator
- Yute Air Alaska
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From AQHTo Bethel Airport (BET), Bethel, 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 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
- Takeoff
- 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 collision with object
- 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 › Directional control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Lift-off, premature
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was departing a rural village runway with two passengers on an air taxi flight. The center of the runway surface had numerous puddles of water. During the takeoff roll, the left main wheel entered a mud puddle, and the airplane veered to the left. The pilot corrected to the right, and raised the airplane's nose to lift off into ground effect, and avoid any more areas of water. The airplane descended slightly, and the pilot lowered the nose to gain airspeed. The airplane climbed away from the runway, and the pilot continued to the destination airport. Upon landing, the pilot discovered damage to the outboard end of the left horizontal stabilizer. The operator reported the airplane struck a runway edge light. An FAA airworthiness inspector reported that the damage to the stabilizer would necessitate the replacement of the outboard nose rib. The Airport Facility Directory listing for the accident airport indicated that potholes were present along the entire length of the runway. The runway was graded about 2 weeks before the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain directional control of the airplane, and his premature liftoff, resulting in a collision with a runway light fixture. Factors in the accident were wet runway conditions, and a rough and uneven runway surface with potholes.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC98LA056
- Event ID
- 20001211X09976
- Case number
- ANC98LA056
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1998-05-22.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 1a5b20f005eab1779f28bb59a70fcfc2cb326fc77979dc4aa0fb09380e860995; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:09:00.351Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N755AB; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, YAAA.