ANC03LA062 · Swearingen SA-226T
Swearingen SA-226T · Accident: undershoot on approach
From Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (PANC) to Goodnews Airport (GNU)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC03LA062
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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
Swearingen SA-226T
- Aircraft type
- Swearingen SA-226
- 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
- N512FS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (PANC), Anchorage, AKTo Goodnews Airport (GNU), GOODNEWS, 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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 · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Undershoot
- 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 › Compensation for wind conditions, inadequate
- Flightcrew › Weather evaluation, 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 captain, the non-flying pilot seated in the right seat, and the first officer, the flying pilot seated in the left seat, were landing a twin engine turboprop airplane at a remote airport at the conclusion of an air taxi flight. The flight was conducted on an IFR flight plan to a nearby airport, and then proceeded VFR, 9.5 miles to the destination airport that has a gravel surface runway, 2,835 feet long and 80 feet wide. The crew reported that a stabilized landing approach was conducted to runway 05 at a reference (REF) airspeed plus 10 knots, with a 5 knot crosswind. The copilot indicated that during the landing, the airplane encountered a severe downdraft and contacted the ground about 100 feet short of the runway threshold. The captain indicated a wind shear of 8 knots was encountered. The closest official weather observation station is located 32 nautical miles south of the accident site. It was reporting, in part: Wind, 180 degrees (true) at 16 knots, gusts to 26 knots. A passenger, who stated he was a meteorologist by training, reported the wind during the landing approach was a direct right crosswind between 12 and 15 knots, with gusts to 20 knots.
Probable cause
The flight crew's inadequate evaluation of the weather conditions, which resulted in their inadequate compensation for the wind conditions, and subsequent undershoot. A contributing factor in the accident was a downdraft.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC03LA062
- Event ID
- 20030702X01001
- Case number
- ANC03LA062
- 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: 3bb434c890b2a5e5b4534fbbee889d87a91048ea2ea123d8842ad5310c4919b5; retrieved 2026-09-18T15:45:18.182Z.