Tamarack Air Cessna 185F accident
Cessna 185F · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during landing
From Fairbanks International Airport (PAFA) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC99LA145
- 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 185F
- 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
- N85LC
- Operator
- Tamarack Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fairbanks International Airport (PAFA), 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 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
- 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, main gear strut › Corroded
- Landing gear, main gear strut › Fatigue
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airline transport certificated pilot was landing a tailwheel equipped airplane on an airstrip near a remote cabin on an on-demand air taxi flight. The airstrip had been used by the pilot in the past. Near the end of the landing roll, the left main landing gear strut fractured above the left wheel axle. The wheel and the lower end of the gear strut separated from the airplane. The upper portion of the gear strut dug into the ground, and the airplane nosed over. The airplane received damage to the right wing, propeller, the vertical stabilizer, and the rudder. The lower end of the gear strut has four holes drilled through the metal to facilitate the installation of the wheel axle and brake assembly. An examination of the landing gear strut found areas of cracking, typical of fatigue, emanating from the inboard edge of the forward, upper bolt hole. One crack developed in an area of two small corrosion pits in the drilled hole. A second crack developed in an area of the fillet between the drilled hole, and the inboard surface of the strut. The cracks from the two areas combined to form one crack laterally across the strut and through the aft, upper bolt hole. The interior surfaces of the forward, upper bolt hole and fillet regions were pitted, consistent with the effects of corrosion. Neither the manufacturer nor the FAA, have established a life limit (hours or cycles) for the main landing gear strut. An annual inspection does not require disassembly of the axle from the gear strut. No inspection procedures, other than a general visual inspection of the landing gear, have been specified by the manufacturer, or the FAA.
Probable cause
Corrosion and a fatigue failure of the lower end of the landing gear strut. Factors in the accident were the manufacturer's and the FAA's insufficient standards/requirements for life limits and inspection procedures.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC99LA145
- Event ID
- 20001212X19671
- Case number
- ANC99LA145
- 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 1999-09-15.
- API snapshot SHA-256: e08a7d3cfef8ad6ea6daf9e4a0470d7142a9a5231a5993c6c498b6bcad859a4d; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:53:02.134Z.