ANC05LA063 · Cessna 185F
Cessna 185F · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Merrill Field (MRI) to Merrill Field (MRI)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC05LA063
- 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 185F
- 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
- N2658S
- Operator
- Dean M. Hilde · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Merrill Field (MRI), Anchorage, AKTo Merrill Field (MRI), Anchorage, 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
- En route · descent
- 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
- Loss of engine power
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Wire, transmission; Tree(s)
- 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
- Mixture control, linkage › Loose
- Pilot in command › Maintenance, annual inspection, not obtained/maintained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot, with two passengers, was preparing to land following a Title 14, CFR Part 91 personal flight. The pilot said that as the airplane descended to about 1,000 msl, all engine power was lost. In an attempt to restore engine power, he switched the airplane's fuel tank selector valve from the "both" position to the "left", then to the "right" position, and back to "both." The pilot noted that he did not activate the airplane's auxiliary fuel pump while he was switching fuel tanks. The pilot selected a small open area that was surrounded by trees and power lines for a forced landing. During the landing approach, the airplane collided with the power lines and trees, receiving substantial damage to the wings, fuselage, and empennage. The accident airplane's maximum fuel capacity is 84 gallons, with 78 gallons of usable fuel. The unusable fuel is 6 gallons, or 3 gallons per side. During an on-site postaccident inspection, about 6 gallons of fuel was drained from the right fuel tank, and about 1.5 gallons of fuel from the left fuel tank. A postaccident engine examination revealed that the brass, fuel control-mounted mixture control lever, was loose on the mixture control shaft. The mixture control shaft was in the closed (off) position. Once the fuel control shaft was manually moved to the open position, the engine was started and operated at various power settings for an extended time. The engine produced its full rated rpm. According to an FAA airworthiness inspector, the accident airplane was about 10 months overdue for an annual inspection, and the mixture control linkage is an item required to be checked during the annual inspection.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power during descent due to a loose mixture control linkage, and the pilot/owner's failure to maintain the airplane's annual inspection schedule, which resulted in a forced landing in an area that contained power lines and trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC05LA063
- Event ID
- 20050505X00558
- Case number
- ANC05LA063
- 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 2005-04-28.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 75f68b676ab1931582b6a2d4a71eb878c5a4d3a5a0c20ee6043c8fe336d88736; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:59:34.922Z.