ANC98LA082 · Cessna 185E
Cessna 185E · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during landing
From Talkeetna Airport (TKA) to Merrill Field (MRI)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC98LA082
- 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
- N85CF
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Talkeetna Airport (TKA), Talkeetna, 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, tire › Low pressure
- Landing gear, tire › Slipped
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was landing a tail wheel equipped airplane on a dry, asphalt runway. The airplane had 24 inch tundra tires installed. The oversize tires utilize a large wheel rim adapter attached to the normal wheel rim. During the landing roll, the right tire deflated. The airplane veered to the right, and the right wing tip struck the runway. The airplane began to ground loop, and the pilot applied the brakes. The airplane nosed down, coming to rest in a near vertical attitude. An inspection of the wheel revealed the right main tire tube valve stem was broken. The wheel adapter rim displayed scuffing on the outboard half of the wheel. The main wheel half was not damaged.
Probable cause
The rotation/slippage of the right main tire on the wheel rim, resulting in shearing of the tire tube valve stem, and subsequent tire deflation. Factors in the accident were oversize, tundra tires operated on a dry, asphalt runway surface.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC98LA082
- Event ID
- 20001211X10219
- Case number
- ANC98LA082
- 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 1998-06-20.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 8458800ff4e23954700fc4b87dd457cf27c61f6a3e1b3758c0ebf235d9d101ae; retrieved 2026-09-22T17:38:46.499Z.