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Bering Air Flight 622

17 Sept 1998 · Noorvik, AK, United States

Piper PA-31-350 · Accident: wheels up landing

From Bob Baker Memorial Airport (PAIK) to Robert (Bob) Curtis Memorial Airport (ORV)

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Event

NTSB case
ANC98LA167
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

Piper PA-31-350

Aircraft type
Piper PA-31
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
N4112D
Operator
Bering Air
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Bob Baker Memorial Airport (PAIK), KIANA, AKTo Robert (Bob) Curtis Memorial Airport (ORV)
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 · flare/touchdown
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
Wheels up landing
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 › Checklist, not followed
  • Pilot in command › Wheels up landing, inadvertent

Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

The certificated airline transport pilot was landing on a gravel runway during a scheduled air taxi flight. The pilot touched down on the runway with the flaps extended, but the landing gear was still retracted. The airplane received extensive damage to the airplane skin and fuselage stringers, in an area from the nose wheel gear doors to the lower wing spar fitting.

Probable cause

A failure of the pilot to follow the aircraft checklist, and an inadvertent wheels up landing.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record ANC98LA167
Event ID
20001211X10997
Case number
ANC98LA167
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: 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: f529fed72028c019f6278297f0397f160de8835885d2717f99559e9adfd00d36; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:04:51.104Z.
  • The NTSB's operator name is blank for N4112D; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, FXTA.