L A B Flying Service Flight 609
Britten-Norman BN-2A Islander · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during landing
From Ketchikan International Airport (PAKT) to Klawock Airport (PAKW)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC05LA055
- 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
Britten-Norman BN-2A Islander
- Aircraft type
- Britten Norman BN-2
- 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
- N29884
- Operator
- L A B Flying Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ketchikan International Airport (PAKT), Ketchikan, AKTo Klawock Airport (PAKW), Klawock, 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
- 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
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Landing gear, main gear › Fractured
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 was landing a twin-engine airplane on a paved runway. The flight was conducted under Title 14, CFR Part 135, as a scheduled domestic passenger flight. The pilot reported that during the landing roll he noted a significant airframe vibration, and a pronounced rumbling noise as the airplane slowed. As he applied the brakes, the airplane veered to the left, and he was unable to keep the airplane on the runway. The airplane continued off the left side of the runway, and the nose of the airplane struck a drainage ditch. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage. During a postaccident inspection, maintenance personnel discovered a broken aluminum alloy landing gear oleo attachment bracket on the left main landing gear strut assembly. Operators that use the aluminum alloy landing gear oleo attachment brackets are required to conduct recurring inspections every 500 hours, or every 1,200 landings, which ever occurs first. According to the FAA airworthiness inspector that inspected the accident airplane's maintenance records, the aluminum alloy oleo attachment bracket was last inspected about 101.0 hours, and 218 landings before the accident. The FAA inspector commented that there was a substantial accumulation of dirt, grease, and oil on and around the broken oleo attachment bracket.
Probable cause
The fracture of the aluminum alloy landing gear bracket assembly, which resulted in a loss of control during the landing roll.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC05LA055
- Event ID
- 20050412X00438
- Case number
- ANC05LA055
- 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: c4c40bc4272aed6f3defdce344397a446fb85414fcc9beb5691bb07527f5c525; retrieved 2026-09-18T15:03:41.113Z.