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GAA16CA434 · Cessna 182 K

17 Aug 2016 · Anchorage, AK, United States

Cessna 182 K · Accident: hard landing

From Bryant Army Airfield (FRN) to Bryant Army Airfield (FRN)

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Event

NTSB case
GAA16CA434
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 182 K

Aircraft type
Cessna 182
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
N2704Q
Operator
Unknown
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Bryant Army Airfield (FRN), Anchorage, AKTo Bryant Army Airfield (FRN), Anchorage, AK
Aircraft age
About 49 years (built 1967)
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
Hard landing
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
  • Personnel issues › Task performance

Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

The pilot reported that while on approach to land on a taxiway due to a larger airplane using the runway to offload, he was distracted by the younger passengers in the rear seats and noticed that the airplane's rate of descent was higher than normal. The pilot further reported that, he advanced the throttle to full, however there was not enough time to recover and the airplane landed hard.

While taxing to park the pilot realized that the airplane had sustained substantial damage as the rudder controls where jammed due to the nose gear impacting the firewall. The pilot was able to taxi the airplane to a parking position without further incident.

The pilot reported that there were no pre impact mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airframe or engine that would have precluded normal operation.

Probable cause

The pilot's failure to maintain a controlled landing flare, which resulted in a hard landing. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's inattention and distraction.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record GAA16CA434
Event ID
20160818X34337
Case number
GAA16CA434
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: 6ce445da3dedc6080e250e44b0c42c265c86df88d864537bbb24b3ab835be218; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:10:21.352Z.