ANC02LA073 · Cessna 206
Alaska West Air Cessna 206 · Accident: wheels down landing in water
From Larsen Bay Airport (2A3) to Karluk Airport (KYK)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC02LA073
- 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 206
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 206
- 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
- N35606
- Operator
- Alaska West Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Larsen Bay Airport (2A3), Larson Bay, AKTo Karluk Airport (KYK), Karluk, 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Wheels down landing in 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 › Wheels down landing in water, inadvertent
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 was landing an amphibious float-equipped airplane on a saltwater lagoon. The pilot reported that after departing from a gravel-covered airstrip, en route to the salt-water lagoon, his attention was temporarily distracted while correcting a minor flap retraction problem. The pilot thought he had placed the landing gear retraction handle in the "up" position, in preparation for a water landing at his destination, but failed to observe 4 blue lights, indicating that wheels were up for a water landing. During touchdown in the lagoon, as the keels of the floats made contact with the water, the airplane suddenly pitched forward, and nosed over. The pilot said that as he exited the sinking airplane, he noticed that the wheels were in the "down" position. Due to the saltwater emersion damage, the landing gear retract/extension system could not be tested. The director of operations for the operator reported that when he interviewed the pilot shortly after the accident, the pilot reported that after departing from the airstrip, his attention was distracted during the wing flap anomaly, and that he just forgot to retract the wheels.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadvertent water landing on amphibious floats with the wheels extended, which resulted in the airplane nosing over. A factor associated with the accident was the pilot's diverted attention during departure.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC02LA073
- Event ID
- 20020724X01202
- Case number
- ANC02LA073
- 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: 08592344bdd9ae504f2f51293fe97af9b125b672af5944a9e1fa4e17472871a1; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:40:40.114Z.