Cape Smythe Air Service Cessna 185F accident
Cessna 185F · Accident: on ground/water collision with terrain/water during landing
From Wiley Post Will Rogers Memorial Airport (PABR) to Deadhorse Airport (PASC)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC00LA099
- 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
- N20752
- Operator
- Cape Smythe Air Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wiley Post Will Rogers Memorial Airport (PABR)To Deadhorse Airport (PASC), DEADHORSE, 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
- 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
- On ground/water collision with terrain/water
- 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 › Unsuitable terrain or takeoff/landing/taxi area, selected
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
At the conclusion of an on-demand air taxi flight, the airline transport certificated pilot was landing a tailwheel-equipped airplane. The landing area was a large area of tundra with eight to ten inch tall grass, next to a fishing camp. The day before the flight, the entire north coast of Alaska had received heavy rain. The pilot said he landed into the wind, toward the north. During the landing roll, as the pilot was applying the brakes, the airplane bounced over an unseen bump and became airborne about 12 inches. When the airplane touched down again, the main wheels encountered soft mud. The airplane nosed over and received damage to the propeller, wing lift struts, the vertical stabilizer, and the rudder.
Probable cause
The pilot's selection of unsuitable terrain for landing. A factor in the accident was a hidden obstruction, and soft terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC00LA099
- Event ID
- 20001212X21631
- Case number
- ANC00LA099
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2000-08-12.
- API snapshot SHA-256: b521d8c06138436b45d25ce64a312dff489383910e794801cde3c862fad8a85b; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:29:30.239Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N20752; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, CSAA.