ANC21LA031 · Cessna A185F
Cessna A185F · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC21LA031
- 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
Cessna A185F
- 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
- N714JE
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 38 years (built 1983)
- 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
- Loss of control on ground
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot-in-command (PIC) reported that, nothing abnormal with the tailwheel-equipped airplane occurred during initial taxi, takeoff, or during the approach. During the landing, after touchdown, as power was reduced and the airplane began to “settle”, the airplane veered right. He attempted to correct for the veer, added engine power, and the airplane became airborne. During the second flight around the pattern the safety pilot (SP) flew the airplane and the approach with no issues. The SP performed the second landing, and after the touchdown the airplane veered to the right again. The SP and PIC attempted to correct for the veer to no avail. The airplane subsequently continued to veer right, exited the runway on the right side, impacted a snowbank, and came to rest inverted.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to the left wing and empennage.
The PIC reported that the nature and circumstances of the incident caused him to believe that there was something mechanical that forced the airplane to turn rapidly to the right during both landings. However, the PIC did not know what that could be.
The airplane had a wheel alignment performed the day before the accident, and the airplane was taxi tested with an additional two takeoffs and landings with the airplane “tracking satisfactory”, before being signed-off.
A post-accident examination of the airplane by a Federal Aviation Administration inspector revealed no mechanical failures or malfunctions. It was noted that the alignment of the main landing gear and wheel could not be determined due to the amount of side-load the airplane experienced during the accident.
Probable cause
A loss of control during landing for reasons that could not be determined based on the available evidence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC21LA031
- Event ID
- 20210422102961
- Case number
- ANC21LA031
- 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: fc41ef9a09a98304ca098b569d5a03432757786b0b4defa6ea4ccd37cff69bae; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:58:36.851Z.