Arctic One Embraer EMB120 FC accident
Embraer EMB120 FC · Accident: flight control system malfunction/failure en route
From Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (ANC) to Iliamna Airport (ILI)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's operator. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA12CA042
- 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
- Airline
- 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
Embraer EMB120 FC
- Aircraft type
- Embraer EMB120
- 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
- N1110J
- Operator
- Arctic One Possible conflict
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (ANC), Anchorage, AKTo Iliamna Airport (ILI), Iliamna, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 24 years (built 1988)
- 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 121: Air Carrier
- 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
- 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
- Flight control system malfunction/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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On February 16, 2012, at about 1308 local time, Everts Air Cargo flight 1291, an Embraer EMB-120, N1110J, experienced an uncommanded pitch down while descending into Iliamna Airport (KILI), Iliamna, Alaska. There were no injuries to the 2 crewmembers onboard but the airplane sustained substantial damage. The flight was operating under 14 CFR Part 121 Supplemental as a cargo only flight from Anchorage, Alaska (KANC) to KILI.
The Captain reported that the flight from KANC had been uneventful. The Captain reported that during the descent, while at about 250 knots airspeed with his hands on the controls and the autopilot engaged, the airplane pitched to about 20 degrees nose down. The captain reported he then disconnected the autopilot and adjusted the pitch trim while pulling back on the column to recover from the pitch excursion. The flight crew declared an emergency and slowed the airplane to about 200 knots. Approximately 5-10 miles from the airport, while in a slow left turn at 3000 feet msl altitude, the airplane pitched down a second time while the captain was hand flying. As he recovered from the pitch down, he was lined up for a 5 mile final approach for runway 35. The captain elected to make a high speed, flaps up landing and landed uneventfully on runway 35. Post-flight inspection revealed that the left elevator was bent at the mid span trim tab, had partially detached from the aircraft, and was missing two attachment bolts.
A review of the airplane maintenance history showed that while in "A" check maintenance, a dent was noted in the left elevator and the elevator was removed. The maintenance team did not follow the EMB 120 maintenance manual procedure for removal of the left elevator. During the non-routine maintenance procedures used by the maintenance team, cotter pin safeties that were removed from castellated nuts on the 2 outboard vertical hinge bolts on the left elevator were not reinstalled. The removal of these two bolts is not part of the EMB 120 maintenance manual procedure for removal of the left elevator. The maintenance team did not document the non-routine procedure they used to remove and reinstall the left elevator.
The Require Inspection Items (RII) inspector had inspected the elevator installation for the procedures in the manual and was not aware of the undocumented non-routine maintenance procedures used, and hence did not examine the nuts that did not have the required cotter pins, which were not to be removed as part of the approved procedure. The FAA found that the maintenance teams that removed and reinstalled the elevator were inexperienced in EMB 120 elevator removal and reinstallation procedures.
Probable cause
the maintenance personnel's failure to install the cotter pins that secured castellated nuts on the left elevator vertical hinge bolts, which resulted in the left elevator partially detaching in flight. Contributing to the accident was the failure of maintenance personnel to document the non-routine maintenance procedure that was used to remove and reinstall the elevator during maintenance.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA12CA042
- Event ID
- 20120217X44044
- Case number
- DCA12CA042
- 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: 1e5b882b30cb7235bd1f307fa39095406342de02d28be8615eaebf50ee340c53; retrieved 2026-09-15T17:15:45.606Z.