ANC21LA001 · Douglas C54 EDC
Alaska Air Fuel Douglas C54 EDC · Accident: runway excursion during landing
From Kenai Municipal Airport (PAEN) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC21LA001
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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
Douglas C54 EDC
- Aircraft type
- Douglas C54
- 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
- N96358
- Operator
- Alaska Air Fuel
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kenai Municipal Airport (PAEN), Kenai, AKTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 76 years (built 1944)
- 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
- Runway excursion
- 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 › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot reported that the flight had been delayed for “nearly 2 weeks due to rain” but that the company had contacted their customer, who was a local resident of the area, and he had reported that the landing grass airstrip was “currently dry” and that he was unaware of any NOTAMs reporting that the runway was closed. The pilot reported that, while landing the airplane on the airstrip, the braking action was “zero” along the entire length of the runway. Subsequently, while about 5 knots, the airplane overran the end of the runway, and the nose landing gear collapsed. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the forward fuselage. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
The pilot reported that, during a formal flight brief from a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Flight Service Station (FSS), he and the copilot asked if there was “anything special going on down there” that they should be aware of” but that FSS personnel did not mention any NOTAMs stating that the runway was closed to heavy airplanes nor was it mentioned when they activated the flight plan. However, according to FAA FSS recordings, during the first conversation, the pilot did not ask for any NOTAMs for the airport. During the second conversation, the FSS asked the pilots if they needed any weather information or NOTAMs, and the pilots responded, “no,” and that they “were all good.” A NOTAM had been issued, which stated, in part, that the landing runway was closed to aircraft that weighed more than 5,000 lbs. The airport chart supplement remarks stated, in part, that “the runway was extremely soft when wet…Use of heavy aircraft over 4,000 lbs gross not recommended during fall, winter, & spring due to” soft field conditions and rutting.” The pilot reported that the airplane’s weight was about 62,568 lbs at the time of the accident.
Probable cause
The pilots’ decision to land on a wet, soft runway, which resulted in the loss of braking action upon landing and a subsequent runway overrun and nose landing gear collapse.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC21LA001
- Event ID
- 20201013102137
- Case number
- ANC21LA001
- 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, cause areas. 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: 5a64976c4bcf36e1428a5cc539e2b568324addb053775f26f99117d27a6ac764; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:14:09.952Z.