ANC98LA134 · Cessna 185E
Cessna 185E · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Talkeetna Airport (TKA) to Talkeetna Airport (TKA)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC98LA134
- 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 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
- N333DG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Talkeetna Airport (TKA)To Talkeetna Airport (TKA)
- 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
- 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
- Loss of control on ground/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
- Pilot in command › Directional control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The 23 year old commercial pilot was landing a tailwheel equipped airplane on a gravel runway. The pilot stated that the touchdown and the landing roll were uneventful, until the airplane's nose veered slightly to the right. He said he compensated by applying left rudder, but the airplane suddenly ground looped to the right. The left wing and left elevator collided with the runway during the ground loop, and both sustained substantial damage. The pilot reported that during the ground loop, the left wheel casting separated. In the NTSB Pilot/Operator report, the Chief Pilot stated that the flight was returning to Talkeetna earlier than scheduled with a sick passenger aboard. He said that the pilot intended to land in the gravel area just short of the paved runway, eliminating the need to back taxi, and allowing the sick passenger to exit the airplane sooner. The operator reported that during touchdown, the pilot landed sideways, and the left wheel casting separated. Wind conditions at the time of the accident were reported to be calm.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain directional control resulting in a inadvertent ground loop. A contributing factor was the induced pressure on the pilot by a sick passenger.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC98LA134
- Event ID
- 20001211X10753
- Case number
- ANC98LA134
- 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 1998-09-01.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 28f23ce5481f335268cdc4ecc52043ef02571f18fabc0e34b6b614a1b70b7647; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:05:27.968Z.