Alaska Skyways Cessna U206G accident
Cessna U206G · Accident: landing gear collapse
From Wasilla Airport (PAWS) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC21LA019
- 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
- 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
Cessna U206G
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 206
- 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
- N1748R
- Operator
- Alaska Skyways
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wasilla Airport (PAWS), Wasilla, AKTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 41 years (built 1980)
- 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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 gear collapse
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of the wheel-equipped tricycle gear airplane reported that, he was landing on a hard packed snow-covered airstrip. After touchdown and during the landing rollout the right main tire and nose wheel broke through the hard crusted snow. The nose gear assembly collapsed, and the right wing struck the ground. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the right wing. The pilot reported no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions that would have precluded normal operations.
In the recommendation section of the NTSB Accident/Incident Reporting Form 6120.1, the operator stated that the accident may have been prevented if the mission parameters had been clearly stated to the pilot, and that hard packed snow will no longer be considered a suitable landing area for wheel-equipped airplanes.
Probable cause
The pilot’s selection of an unsuitable landing surface.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC21LA019
- Event ID
- 20210302102697
- Case number
- ANC21LA019
- 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 2021-03-01.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 0ebea6cebe9f089aa46e86efe2cd8a7a746a5e1e5d1757ce10f72cfad709de54; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:45:32.245Z.