ANC00LA072 · Cessna 180
Cessna 180 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during landing
From Merrill Field (MRI) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC00LA072
- 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
- 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 180
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 180
- 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
- N3229D
- Operator
- Jay S. Hammond · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Merrill Field (MRI), Anchorage, 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 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
- 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
- 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 › Failure, total
- Landing gear, main gear strut › Fatigue
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was landing on his 1,200 feet long by 100 feet wide gravel airstrip. He stated to the NTSB investigator-in-charge that as soon as the airplane touched down, the left landing gear leg dug into the ground, and the airplane nosed over. The left landing gear strut was missing the lower four inches, fracturing at the main landing gear axle attachment bolt holes. The left wheel assembly was located 200 feet from the wreckage. The pilot indicated the airplane had wheel-ski assemblies installed until one month prior to the accident. The lower section of the fractured landing gear leg was inspected at the NTSB materials laboratory on August 16, 2000. The four corners of the fractured bolt holes showed fatigue cracks starting from corrosion pits. Large amounts of corrosion pitting and oxidation were noted on the surface of the gear leg adjacent to the origin of the cracks.
Probable cause
The fatigue failure of the left main landing gear leg at the main landing gear axle attachment bolt holes.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC00LA072
- Event ID
- 20001212X21144
- Case number
- ANC00LA072
- 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 2000-06-21.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 5d84394c27a1dd910784c2493f5c77e7322092a9d09bdd2100141b65531a3c4c; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:47:35.455Z.