ANC07LA059 · Piper PA-31
Piper PA-31 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during landing
From Selawik Airport (PASK) to Ralph Wien Memorial Airport (PAOT)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC07LA059
- 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
Piper PA-31
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-31
- 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
- N3535F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Selawik Airport (PASK), Selawik, AKTo Ralph Wien Memorial Airport (PAOT), Kotzebue, 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 · 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
- Company maintenance personnel › Maintenance, installation, inadequate
- Landing gear, parking brake › Locked
- Miscellaneous, bolt/nut/fastener/clamp/spring › Not secured
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 pilot reported that at the start of his second flight of the day, the airplane's brakes appeared to be locked, but the parking brake was not set. He was able to unlock the brakes by manipulating the parking brake several times, applying engine power, and by moving the nose gear steering via the rudder pedals several times. The airplane brakes released, but he did not report the brake problem to the operator. While landing at the end of the third flight, the pilot said that as soon as all three landing gear tires were on the ground, the airplane began a gradual right turn. He said he applied left brake and left rudder with minimal effect. The left main landing gear tire produced a skid mark on the runway as the airplane overshot the planned taxiway exit, and then departed off the right edge of the runway. The airplane received structural damage to the fuselage and wing spars. The airplane was equipped with hydraulic brakes, and a hydraulic parking brake valve. The parking brake valve is activated by a cable between the valve and the parking brake handle. Application of the airplane's brakes via pedal pressure, and then pulling out on the parking brake handle, sets the parking brake. After recovery from the ditch, an FAA inspector, accompanied by a mechanic from the operator, examined the airplane. Their examination revealed that the parking brake cable was not securely fastened to the airframe by its attaching clamp. This could allow the outer cable housing to move independent of the inner wire attached to the parking brake valve, and could prevent parking brake release. Partial valve activation could hold hydraulic brake pressure on the airplane's brakes, if the brakes were touched during flight.
Probable cause
Locked parking brakes and the operator's maintenance personnel's failure to properly secure the parking brake cable at its fuselage attaching clamp.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC07LA059
- Event ID
- 20070703X00868
- Case number
- ANC07LA059
- 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 2007-06-29.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 7e259f3f7a3e710a015d27d72ed1b17c92c85df0a196f78eb54fcaf857e0f2da; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:42:41.282Z.