C-Air Cessna 185F accident
Cessna 185F · Accident: in flight encounter with weather during takeoff
From an unrecorded airport to King Salmon Airport (PAKN)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC99LA147
- 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
- N60859
- Operator
- C-Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo King Salmon Airport (PAKN), KING SALMON, AK
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- In flight encounter with weather
- 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 › Compensation for wind conditions, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial certificated pilot landed at a lake in a float equipped airplane. He was conducting a nonscheduled air taxi flight to retrieve moose meat and antlers. He was assisted by a non-revenue passenger. The lake is oriented east/west, about 1,900 feet long, and about 800 feet wide. The meat had been left behind the day before the accident, when the pilot transported hunting clients from the lake. The pilot departed the lake toward the west, and lifted off about 300 feet before the end of the lake. The pilot said the airplane climbed to about 50 feet above the ground, and then encountered a downdraft from mountains/hills located south of the accident scene. He said full power was already applied to the engine, but the airplane descended into soft, marshy terrain, and nosed over about 200 to 300 yards beyond the west end of the lake. The airplane received damage to the propeller, the right wing, and the left wing spar. The pilot indicated the weather conditions were, in part: Clouds and sky condition, 2,500 feet broken; wind, from the south (180 degrees) at 8 knots; visibility, 25 miles; temperature, 50 degrees F; precipitation, none; turbulence, none to light.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate compensation for wind conditions. Factors in the accident were the pilot's inadequate evaluation of the weather conditions, a downdraft, and swampy terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC99LA147
- Event ID
- 20001212X19673
- Case number
- ANC99LA147
- 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: dc34d352138399138928f07672dd453a86d875d324d97006a5f09db6ae928883; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:52:48.101Z.