ANC01LA129 · de Havilland C-7A
de Havilland C-7A · Accident: in flight encounter with weather on approach
From Iliamna Airport (PAIL) to Port Alsworth Airport (PALJ)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC01LA129
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
de Havilland C-7A
- Aircraft type
- de Havilland C-7
- 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
- N2225C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Iliamna Airport (PAIL), ILIAMNA, AKTo Port Alsworth Airport (PALJ), PORT ASLWORTH, 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- In flight encounter with weather
- 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 › Proper glidepath, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Short field landing/procedure, improper
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The captain and the first officer were landing a short takeoff and landing (STOL) cargo airplane on a private, dirt and gravel surface runway. The airplane was configured for landing with 40 degrees of flaps. During the landing approach, variations in indicated airspeed and ground speed indicated windshear conditions. About 100 to 200 feet above the ground, the airplane encountered a downdraft and began to drift to the right of the runway centerline. The captain said she increased engine power and applied full left aileron and rudder, but could not gain directional or pitch control of the airplane. The right wing struck trees, short of the runway threshold, increasing the airplane's right yaw. The captain said that as the airplane neared the ground, she pulled the engine throttles off. The airplane struck the ground with the right main landing gear and right front portion of the fuselage. The airplane then pivoted to the right, 180 degrees from the approach heading. The owner of the airport reported that wind conditions from the east may produce downdrafts in the area of runway 05. He indicated that at the time of the accident, the wind was blowing from the east about 15 knots. The first officer reported the captain appeared to be attempting to maintain a stabilized approach angle by varying the pitch attitude of the airplane. A review of company training literature revealed that the airplane is especially sensitive to slight wind shear, and wind gusts as low as 5 knots when operating at low airspeeds. Pilots are cautioned that when flying the aircraft at low speeds, a large application of the aileron control may be required to maintain wings level. During gusty wind conditions, the threshold airspeed should be increased by one-half the gust factor, and any lateral displacement should be corrected rapidly. If a wing is allowed to drop beyond corrective action of full aileron, power should be increased immediately to regain level flight.
Probable cause
The captain's failure to maintain the proper glidepath, and improper short field landing procedures. Factors in the accident were a downdraft, and the captain's inadequate evaluation of the weather conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC01LA129
- Event ID
- 20011022X02127
- Case number
- ANC01LA129
- 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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2001-08-30.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 198c31791b4bf23ad5fdf71eb5c6a593afb8f68b3d2eef53e281fb6b4fd8075e; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:51:32.899Z.