Hageland Aviation Services Flight 140
Cessna 208B · Accident: powerplant system/component malfunction/failure during initial climb
From Mekoryuk Airport (PAMY) to Bethel Airport (PABE)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC13LA012
- 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 208B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 208
- 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
- N169LJ
- Operator
- Hageland Aviation Services
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mekoryuk Airport (PAMY), Mekoryuk, AKTo Bethel Airport (PABE), Bethel, 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Powerplant system/component 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Shortly after the scheduled commuter flight departed with the second-in-command (SIC) at the controls, the engine "coughed," started vibrating, and lost power. The SIC attempted to restart the engine, but was unsuccessful. Subsequently, the pilot-in-command assumed control of the airplane and landed on a frozen bay, which resulted in substantial damage to the airplane's right wing and fuselage. A postaccident examination of the airplane's engine revealed that one of the first-stage compressor blades had fractured due to fatigue cracking. The source of the fatigue crack could not be determined due to secondary damage sustained to the fracture surface.
Probable cause
The total loss of engine power as a result of a fractured first-stage compressor blade due to fatigue cracking. The source of the fatigue crack could not be determined due to secondary damage sustained to the fracture surface.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC13LA012
- Event ID
- 20121204X63622
- Case number
- ANC13LA012
- 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: af83a57c4dd5f97903ae8d37ff1c0ef3cdc3bcbc8c15dc25caf194f63e61c36e; retrieved 2026-09-15T20:31:26.429Z.