ANC00FA081 · Cessna 337C
Cessna 337C · Accident: airframe, component or system failure before flight
From Marshall Don Hunter Sr Airport (MLL) to Unalakleet Airport (UNK)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC00FA081
- 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
- 1 · 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
Cessna 337C
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 337
- 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
- N63MR
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Marshall Don Hunter Sr Airport (MLL)To Unalakleet Airport (UNK), Unalakleet, 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 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
- Prior to flight
- 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Stall
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Operation with known deficiencies in equipment, intentional
- Pilot in command › Stall, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was unable to start the aft engine. A witness suggested the pilot delay the flight until a new starter could be obtained. The pilot insisted he could takeoff, and said he had performed single engine takeoffs previously in the airplane. He chose a point on the dry, 1,940 feet long, 90 feet msl, gravel runway where he would abort if the airplane was not airborne. The witness said that as the airplane passed the abort point, the nose wheel was lifting off the ground. The airplane climbed to about 50 feet, the wings rocked slightly, and the airplane passed out of sight behind a low hill and impacted in a lake. The pilot received fatal injuries. There is no published procedure for taking off with either engine inoperative. The landing gear was retracted in-flight, and the gear doors were shut. The rear propeller was not feathered. The emergency procedures for a single-engine failure after takeoff or during climb states, in part: 'Single-engine climb performance with the rear engine operating is better than with the front engine operating by approximately 85 FPM....The landing gear should not be retracted until all immediate obstacles are cleared, regardless of which engine is out....Airplane drag with the landing gear doors opened and the gear partially extended is greater than the drag with the landing gear fully extended. Corresponding rate-of-climb penalties are -240 ft/min and -110 ft/min respectively.' The best rate of climb airspeed is 100 mph. The performance specifications provided in the Cessna 337C Owner's Manual for rate of climb are in part: 'Rate of climb at sea level, 4,000 pounds gross weight, best rate of climb airspeed, landing gear retracted, rear engine feathered, front engine operating only = 425 ft/min.' Postmortem toxicology samples from the pilot revealed the presence of Chlorpheniramine, an over-the-counter medication which causes drowsiness and impairs cognitive and motor tasks.
Probable cause
The pilot's attempted takeoff with known deficiencies in equipment (an inoperable rear engine) and an inadvertent stall. Factors associated with the accident were the pilot's improper retraction of the landing gear, his over confidence in the airplane's ability, and his impairment from an over-the-counter cold/allergy drug.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC00FA081
- Event ID
- 20001212X21134
- Case number
- ANC00FA081
- 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 2000-07-01.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 74f68ecb457e8d3722d76d1339dc388b25a3fc638c1f178b1ce5aa40cb9aaf03; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:05:55.416Z.