Mountain Flying Service Cessna 185 accident
Cessna 185 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during landing
From Haines Airport (HNS) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC00LA105
- 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 185
- 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
- N185M
- Operator
- Mountain Flying Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Haines Airport (HNS), Haines, 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 · 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 said that during landing on firm sand, the right landing gear leg separated at the wheel attachment upper bolts. The remaining gear leg dug into the sand, and the airplane spun around. The airplane sustained substantial damage to both main landing gear attachments, and both wings. The NTSB materials laboratory found areas of fatigue at both upper bolt holes. Corrosion pitting was found at one of the fatigue sites. The airplane had been operated on skis in the past.
Probable cause
The total fatigue failure of the right main landing gear leg.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC00LA105
- Event ID
- 20001212X21637
- Case number
- ANC00LA105
- 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 2000-08-17.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 49fa14996b38e14a0d3c0b5019c83e6d0857dead4a6f055dc857442b615b328e; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:28:40.575Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N185M; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.