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Ryan Air Short BROS. & Harland SC7 SERIES 3 accident

3 May 2012 · Chefornak, AK, United States

Short BROS. & Harland SC7 SERIES 3 · Accident: abnormal runway contact during landing

From Bethel Airport (PABE) to Chefornak Airport (PACK)

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Event

NTSB case
ANC12CA036
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

Short BROS. & Harland SC7 SERIES 3

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
N1906
Operator
Ryan Air
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Bethel Airport (PABE), Bethel, AKTo Chefornak Airport (PACK), Chefornak, 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
Abnormal runway contact
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

  • Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
  • Personnel issues › Action/decision

Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

The pilot was landing on a narrow gravel runway adjacent to a gravel road. He reported that both the road and runway were covered with snow and that flat light conditions made it difficult to discern between the two surfaces. He inadvertently landed to the left of the runway on the rough road, which resulted in structural damage to the nose landing gear bulkhead.

Probable cause

The pilot's misidentification of a nearby snow-covered road as the snow-covered runway in flat light conditions.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record ANC12CA036
Event ID
20120504X62009
Case number
ANC12CA036
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: 513679d3f0e545733182886e140c13fe68e8648925f0095e24303cf9bf747e04; retrieved 2026-09-15T17:59:27.027Z.