ANC08LA035 · Learjet 35A
Chipola Aviation Learjet 35A · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (PANC) to Aniak Airport (PANI)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC08LA035
- 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
Learjet 35A
- Aircraft type
- Learjet 35
- 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
- N351AS
- Operator
- Chipola Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (PANC), Anchorage, AKTo Aniak Airport (PANI), Aniak, 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 · flare/touchdown
- Defining eventThe 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 control in flight
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flightcrew of a turbojet airplane were landing during dark night VFR conditions at the conclusion of an instrument flight rules (IFR) cross-country aeromedical positioning flight. The captain said he broke out of the cloud base about 1,200 feet msl, 7 miles from the runway. He said he was holding about 15 to 20 degrees of left crab to remain aligned with the runway centerline, and he felt a strong crosswind over the runway threshold. During the landing flare, the left wingtip fuel tank contacted the runway. The captain applied full right aileron and full right rudder, and the airplane touched down on the centerline. After parking, an inspection of the left wingtip fuel tank revealed scraping and flattening of about the aft third of the underside of the fuel tank. The upper surface of the wing, inboard from the tip tank, was wrinkled. The automated weather observing system (AWOS) was reporting, in part: Wind, 270 degrees at 5 knots; visibility, 9 statute miles; clouds and sky condition, 1,200 feet overcast. The FAA Facility Directory/Alaska Supplement notes that "Because of natural obstructions, the AWOS-3 wind may be unrepresentative of runway wind conditions." The captain indicated that the landing approach speed was flown with additional airspeed to compensate for the wind conditions, and he noted that he could only assume that windshear contributed to the accident.
Probable cause
The captain's inadequate compensation for wind conditions during the landing flare/touchdown. Contributing to the accident were a crosswind and windshear.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC08LA035
- Event ID
- 20080306X00280
- Case number
- ANC08LA035
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: a54349960aeedb8e9bfbaeaa996a27effcf4f3e6432080d8cf3b19ebd4ef547b; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:24:55.945Z.