Evergreen International Airlines Flight 203
Boeing 747-128 · Accident: dragged wing, rotor, pod, float or tail/skid during initial climb
From Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (ANC) to Travis Air Force Base (KSUU)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC02LA008
- 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
- Airline
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Boeing 747-128
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 747
- 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
- N3203Y
- Operator
- Evergreen International Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (ANC), Anchorage, AKTo Travis Air Force Base (KSUU), TRAVIS AFB, CA
- 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 121: Air Carrier
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Dragged wing, rotor, pod, float or tail/skid
- 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
- Flightcrew › Aircraft weight and balance, not calculated
- Flightcrew › Preflight planning/preparation, 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 flight crew of a Boeing 747 cargo airplane made a scheduled fuel stop in Anchorage, Alaska, in preparation for the final leg of the flight to Travis AFB. The accident airplane was refueled with about 100,000 lbs. of fuel. During takeoff in Anchorage, the tail of the airplane struck the runway, and sustained substantial damage. A postaccident investigation revealed that prior to departure, the crew failed to account for the weight of the additional fuel, and inadvertently used the same performance cards that were used for the previous landing. The crew was unaware that the tail had struck the runway until after arrival at Travis AFB.
Probable cause
The flight crew's inadequate preflight planning, and failure to calculate the airplane weight and balance prior to departure.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC02LA008
- Event ID
- 20020114X00069
- Case number
- ANC02LA008
- 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: investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 1537bc1a2268fb6acf7c1a361130fd81cdcab7cc8a6b8f7da794e09d01881298; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:07:15.327Z.