Grant Aviation Flight 166
Piper PA-31-350 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during landing
From Alakanuk Airport (AUK) to Emmonak Airport (PAEM)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC00LA133
- 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
Piper PA-31-350
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-31
- 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
- N4105D
- Operator
- Grant Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Alakanuk Airport (AUK), Alakanuk, AKTo Emmonak Airport (PAEM)
- 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
- 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 scissors › Overload
- 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
The airline transport certificated pilot was landing a twin engine airplane on a rough, gravel runway that contained potholes. The commuter flight had just departed a similar, rough runway. During the landing roll, the airplane rolled down the runway for about 600 feet. The right main landing gear wheel then rotated about 90 degrees in its landing gear strut housing, and slid along the surface of the gravel runway for several hundred feet. The lower landing gear strut and wheel then broke away from the upper strut housing. The right wing settled onto the runway. The right propeller tips, and the trailing edge of the right flap were damaged. The right wing attach points for the landing gear were not damaged. Upon inspection of the airplane, a torque link, installed on the right main landing gear strut, was found fractured at the outer pivot bolt hole. An metallurgical examination of the torque link revealed a fracture through the pivot point of the link with features typical of overstress separation. No evidence of preexisting conditions, such as crack arrest marks, or corrosion damage was found.
Probable cause
The pilot's continued operation of the airplane on unsuitable terrain, and the subsequent failure of the main landing gear torque link. Factors in the accident were rough and uneven runways, and inadequate surveillance of airport facilities/runway conditions by company management.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC00LA133
- Event ID
- 20001212X21899
- Case number
- ANC00LA133
- 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 2000-09-15.
- API snapshot SHA-256: a2a64c971a55322537ee056961e24ca29f9dddb1bae949fcac9dbc9d3cf97af6; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:25:41.271Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N4105D; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, ENHA.