ANC18LA059 · Cessna A185F F
Cessna A185F F · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route
From Council Airport (K29) to Nome Airport (OME)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC18LA059
- 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 F
- 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
- N185KB
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Council Airport (K29), Council, AKTo Nome Airport (OME), Nome, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 39 years (built 1979)
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Loss of engine power (partial)
- 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
- 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
The private pilot was conducting a cross-country flight when he demonstrated a momentary zero-G maneuver, shortly after which the engine lost partial power. The pilot was unable to restore engine power and subsequently conducted a forced landing to tundra covered terrain, during which the airplane nosed over, resulting in substantial damage. Postaccident examination of the airframe and engine revealed no anomalies that would have precluded normal operation; however, one engine exhaust valve exhibited signatures consistent with uneven excessive heat exposure, but no mechanical failure of the valve, therefore would not have resulted in a loss of power. It is unlikely that a momentary zero G maneuver would result in a partial power loss that could not be restored.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined because postaccident examination of the engine revealed no mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC18LA059
- Event ID
- 20180801X55334
- Case number
- ANC18LA059
- 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, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2018-08-01.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ede691e570780744be380d01f9c4e4ab022dceab910eba62cedc97152e7680fa; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:02:11.948Z.