ANC98LA097 · Piper PA-32-300
Bellair Piper PA-32-300 · Accident: on ground/water collision with terrain/water during landing
From Fairbanks International Airport (FAI) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC98LA097
- 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
Piper PA-32-300
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N8698N
- Operator
- Bellair
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fairbanks International Airport (FAI), Fairbanks, AKTo not recorded
- 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
- On ground/water collision with terrain/water
- 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
- Atc personnel(fss) › Unsafe/hazardous condition warning, not issued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial air taxi pilot-in-command (PIC) was taking a routine competency flight check from an FAA inspector. The FAA inspector asked the PIC to perform a landing on a turf runway, and to stop short of a designated spot on the field. The pilot made an uneventful landing, but was unable to stop the airplane prior to the designated spot. The airplane continued to roll on the turf runway, but soon encountered a large, unseen, hole about midfield. The nosewheel entered the hole, and the nose landing gear subsequently collapsed. The PIC reported he had received a standard weather briefing via telephone from an FAA Flight Service Station specialist just prior to the flight, but had received no information about the hole in the middle of the runway. A review of the Notices to Airmen (NOTAMs) disclosed an active NOTAM regarding a 24 inch deep, by 6 feet wide hole, midfield of the runway the PIC landed on. This NOTAM was not given to the PIC during his weather briefing as required by the FAA Air Traffic Control procedures manual.
Probable cause
The failure of the FAA Flight Service Station specialist to issue an active Notice to Airmen that noted a hazardous condition on the runway. Factors associated with the accident are the rough and uneven runway, and inadequate runway maintenance by airport personnel.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC98LA097
- Event ID
- 20001211X10450
- Case number
- ANC98LA097
- 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: 5816890aed222b2250b6ce567a12cea36cc337d04f6cd559906a2039325960b3; retrieved 2026-09-22T17:29:30.868Z.