ANC16CA040 · Cessna 180 C
Cessna 180 C · Accident: landing area undershoot
From Quartz Creek /Kougarok/ Airport (5QC) to Nome City Field (94Z)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC16CA040
- 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 180 C
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 180
- 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
- N9203T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Quartz Creek /Kougarok/ Airport (5QC), QUARTZ CREEK, AKTo Nome City Field (94Z), Nome, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 56 years (built 1960)
- 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
- Landing
- 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
- Landing area undershoot
- 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 oper/perf/capability
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Task performance
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 stated that while landing on a gravel surfaced runway in a tailwheel-equipped airplane, a downdraft was encountered, which forced the airplane to the ground prematurely. The airplane subsequently impacted an estimated 38-inch-high metal barricade that was located about 90 feet from the runway threshold resulting in substantial damage to the right wing lift strut
The pilot stated that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or anomalies with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
The airport manager stated that the metal barricade sections were erected each summer season to prevent All-Terrain Vehicles from using the runway, thus mitigating runway incursions.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain an adequate glide path during landing, which resulted in the airplane landing short of the runway and impacting a barricade. Contributing to the accident was the airport manager's improper placement and marking of a metal barricade that encroached on the runway safety area.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC16CA040
- Event ID
- 20160711X65339
- Case number
- ANC16CA040
- 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 2016-07-04.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ab1324db79620c41e25c67fc068c5219f6ce35967cb27755e8bd0475539b738a; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:39:03.341Z.