ANC05IA048 · Reims Aviation F406
Reims Aviation F406 · Incident: airframe, component or system failure on approach
From Savoonga Airport (SVA) to Nome Airport (PAOM)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC05IA048
- 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
- Incident
- 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
Reims Aviation F406
- Aircraft type
- Reims F406
- 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
- N6591R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Savoonga Airport (SVA), Savoonga, AKTo Nome Airport (PAOM), Nome, 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
- Approach · VFR pattern downwind
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Minor
Cause areas
- Landing gear, nose gear attach point › Failure
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airline transport certificated pilot of the Title 14, CFR Part 91, positioning flight reported getting an unsafe nose gear indication prior to landing, and was unable to extend the nose gear. He landed the airplane with the nose wheel retracted. An inspection of the nose landing gear up lock actuator bracket by the National Transportation Safety Board investigator-in-charge, revealed that both the left and right sides of the bracket had fatigue cracks that propagated from the top of each side to the top of a lightening hole near the center of each side. The lower portion of the bracket had distorted, changing its position relative to the nose wheel up lock mechanism, which rendered the up lock unable to disengage. Maintenance records indicated compliance with inspection guidelines for the affected area by the operator. The pilot reported that there were no other mechanical problems with the airplane prior to the incident.
Probable cause
The failure of the nose gear up lock actuator bracket during the landing approach due to fatigue cracking, which resulted in a nose wheel up landing. A factor associated with the incident is the mechanical binding of the nose wheel locking mechanism.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC05IA048
- Event ID
- 20050318X00333
- Case number
- ANC05IA048
- 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: 874783064058445d620dfecc4e4052841d855d5375227282689bebf88e2c5ef1; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:12:55.794Z.