ANC02TA001 · Cessna 185F
Office of Aircraft Services Cessna 185F · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Bethel Airport (BET) to Bethel Airport (BET)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC02TA001
- 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
- Government
- 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
- N9344N
- Operator
- Office of Aircraft Services
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bethel Airport (BET), Bethel, AKTo Bethel Airport (BET), Bethel, 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
- Public Aircraft
- 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
- Loss of control on ground/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 › Compensation for wind conditions, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The certificated commercial pilot, with the two passengers, was landing a tailwheel-equipped airplane on a dry, paved runway. In a written statement to the NTSB, the pilot reported that while on approach for landing on runway 18, he encountered wind estimated to be from 230 degrees at 8 knots. The pilot wrote: "Upon contact of the mains, I felt a very hard pull to the right. I then applied left rudder and brake, but this was ineffective in stopping it from coming around to the right." The airplane ultimately ground looped to the right, and the left wing and left elevator struck the edge of the runway. A postaccident disassembly and inspection of the accident airplane's tailwheel assembly revealed that tailwheel steering horn showed signs of wear.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate compensation for wind conditions. Factors associated in the accident were a crosswind, and a worn tailwheel steering horn.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC02TA001
- Event ID
- 20011106X02202
- Case number
- ANC02TA001
- 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 2001-10-06.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 7db9be4d46e841aa8eb2ad69ca9135aace0e6c37855d0ad4eb6c408b3e6f1349; retrieved 2026-09-18T21:19:55.608Z.