ANC02LA056 · Cessna 185
Cessna 185 · Accident: nose over during landing
From Iliamna Airport (PAIL) to Bold Airport (A13)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC02LA056
- 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
Cessna 185
- 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
- N9378H
- Operator
- William Scoular
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Iliamna Airport (PAIL), Iliamna, AKTo Bold Airport (A13), Bold Airstrip, 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
- 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
- Nose over
- 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 › Brakes(normal), excessive
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of the accident airplane made a straight-in approach to the 1,000 feet long airstrip. The pilot said he thought his ground speed felt a little fast, and that he thought he might have landed with a tailwind. He said the airplane touched down about halfway down the runway. He said when the main wheels touched he applied the brakes, the wheels locked-up, and the airplane nosed over. The airplane came to rest upside down near the center of the airstrip. A postaccident inspection by the pilot's mechanic disclosed no anomalies with the brakes.
Probable cause
The pilot's excessive braking, which resulted in a noseover during landing. Factors associated with the accident were the pilot's improper touchdown point, and landing with a tailwind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC02LA056
- Event ID
- 20020702X01039
- Case number
- ANC02LA056
- 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 2002-06-22.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 317693b5b3165227787dd0f0806e11728e15e406fa01a2054eccd04fcecd6ccf; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:41:27.421Z.