Northern Air Cargo Flight 20
Boeing 727-100 · Accident: dragged wing, rotor, pod, float or tail/skid on approach
From Fairbanks International Airport (PAFA) to Ralph Wien Memorial Airport (PAOT)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC02LA015
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Boeing 727-100
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 727
- 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
- N190AJ
- Operator
- Northern Air Cargo
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fairbanks International Airport (PAFA), Fairbanks, AKTo Ralph Wien Memorial Airport (PAOT), Kotzebue, 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 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
- Approach · circling (IFR)
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the base to final leg of the circle to land approach, the pilot overshot the centerline of the runway. On short final and at a low altitude, the pilot still had not attained alignment with the centerline of the runway. The pilot made a left turn, and then a right turn, attempting to align the airplane with the runway. During the right turn, he dragged the right wing on the snow-covered ground, damaging the outboard leading-edge slat.
Probable cause
The pilot's decision to continue an unstabalized approach to landing. A factor associated with the accident is the pilot's failure to attain proper alignment with the runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC02LA015
- Event ID
- 20020306X00309
- Case number
- ANC02LA015
- 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: 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: e5923d948fd453e80dc4d60a0f4e29c52b445a3b665372b223cfab400cf0466f; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:05:43.666Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N190AJ; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.