ANC12LA106 · Cessna A185F
Denali Air Cessna A185F · Accident on approach
From Denali Airport (AK06) to Denali Airport (AK06)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC12LA106
- 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
Cessna A185F
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 185
- 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
- N4786Q
- Operator
- Denali Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Denali Airport (AK06), Denali Park, AKTo Denali Airport (AK06), Denali Park, 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
- Approach
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Wire
- 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 pilot was returning from a weather observation flight when the right wheel/ski actuator connecting bolt broke and the ski deflected downward about 90 degrees. The pilot maintained control of the airplane; however, during the descent to the airport he realized that he was descending faster than he anticipated. He increased the airplane’s pitch angle in an effort to climb, but the airplane contacted a power line. The pilot continued to the destination airport and landed after two low passes. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the left wing. The pilot stated that he was aware of the power line, but was so focused on the ski deflection and maintaining control of the airplane that he did not even realize that the airplane had struck it. The failure of the wheel/ski actuator connecting bolt was likely due to the repetitive forces to the skis that typically occur in normal ski operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain clearance from an electric transmission line during the approach to land because he was distracted by the airplane’s broken and deflected landing ski. Contributing to the accident was the in-flight failure of the right ski connecting bolt and the subsequent ski deflection.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC12LA106
- Event ID
- 20120918X23113
- Case number
- ANC12LA106
- 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: 6ea003ec07e56c512d35bb52e61d489804b967e35d57c3876f9f60033e5c41e6; retrieved 2026-09-15T19:53:52.131Z.