Wright Air Service Cessna 207 accident
Cessna 207 · Accident: landing area overshoot
From Fairbanks International Airport (FAI) to . · Fairbanks, AK
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC08CA114
- 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
Cessna 207
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 207
- 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
- N91027
- Operator
- Wright Air Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fairbanks International Airport (FAI), Fairbanks, AKTo . · Fairbanks, 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 · 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
- Landing area overshoot
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot related that he was attempting to land at a rough and uneven remote airstrip, which was surrounded by mountainous terrain. He added that the southerly approach to the airstrip required a correction for variable, easterly winds between 5 and 10 knots. He said that just before touchdown he elected to add engine power to avoid an area of rough terrain on the northern end of the site. The airplane ballooned, and landed about mid-length along the 1,500 foot-long, by 30 feet-wide airstrip. After touchdown, the pilot realized that he would be unable to stop the airplane before reaching the end of the airstrip, and he added full engine power to abort the landing, but the airplane failed to become airborne again. The airplane continued off the south end of the site, down an embankment, and into a creek bed. The airplane sustained structural damage to the wings, fuselage, and empennage. The pilot noted that there were no preaccident mechanical anomalies with the airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot's delay in aborting the landing. A factor contributing to the accident was a variable wind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC08CA114
- Event ID
- 20081003X62322
- Case number
- ANC08CA114
- 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. 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: cfd8ffd5571be41539a00e432e51330a86d3b611cf3b6f6b360ec26458df254b; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:21:24.409Z.