Talkeetna Air Taxi Cessna 185 accident
Cessna 185 and Cessna 172 · Accident: midair collision on approach
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC15LA033
- 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
Aircraft 1 · Cessna 185
- 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
- N1694M
- Operator
- Talkeetna Air Taxi
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Talkeetna Airport (TKA), Talkeetna, AKTo Talkeetna Airport (TKA), Talkeetna, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 44 years (built 1971)
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Midair collision
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Aircraft 2 · Cessna 172
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N8525U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Warren "Bud" Woods Palmer Municipal Airport (PAQ), Palmer, AKTo Talkeetna Airport (TKA), Talkeetna, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 51 years (built 1964)
- 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 · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Midair collision
- 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 › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A Cessna 185 airplane was operating as a commercial air tour flight with five passengers on board in day, visual meteorological conditions. A student pilot was operating a Cessna 172 as a solo cross-country flight; both aircraft were landing on the same runway. The Cessna 185 entered the traffic pattern on an extended right base about 2.5 miles from the end of the runway, and the pilot was following procedures established by local commercial air tour operators, which did not include information about reporting points or describe nonstandard traffic pattern entry procedures; this information is contained in Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) publications. The other airplane was also in the right traffic pattern for the same runway, and the student pilot was following the prescribed, FAA-recommended right traffic pattern procedures.
A review of recorded radio communications from the common traffic advisory frequency revealed that the student pilot made position reports 10 miles from the airport, 5 miles from the airport, directly over midfield, on the right downwind leg, and when turning from the base to final leg. The commercial pilot made two position reports: one at a visual flight rules reporting point and a second one during which he stated that he was No. 2 on the base leg for the runway even though he was actually No. 3. The student pilot turned his airplane onto the final approach leg behind the airplane that was No. 2 on the base leg for the runway. While on short final, the Cessna 185 impacted the Cessna 172 from behind, above, and slightly to the right, which resulted in the Cessna 185 straddling the Cessna 172. The two airplanes remained conjoined until ground impact. The commercial pilot reported that he never saw the other airplane. If the commercial pilot had followed the FAA-recommended traffic pattern procedures, he might have been able to see the Cessna 172 and avoid hitting it.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain an adequate visual lookout, which resulted in a midair collision. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's failure to follow Federal Aviation Administration-recommended traffic pattern procedures.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC15LA033
- Event ID
- 20150601X13437
- Case number
- ANC15LA033
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2015-06-01.
- API snapshot SHA-256: febd353a6c2578f3ff74e64bf7d190e0350c2e466c87f004a6da18cb41a617f5; retrieved 2026-09-13T18:24:12.784Z.