ANC25LA030 · Cessna A185F
Cessna A185F · Accident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) while taxiing
From an unrecorded airport to Lake Hood Seaplane Base (LHD)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC25LA030
- 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
- N1718R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Lake Hood Seaplane Base (LHD), Anchorage, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 51 years (built 1974)
- 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
- Taxi
- 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
- System/component malfunction/failure (non-power)
- 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 systems
- Personnel issues › Task performance
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 reported that, while taxiing for takeoff from a remote, snow-covered lake, the right landing gear leg collapsed, resulting in substantial damage to the landing gear box assembly and door post assembly. A postaccident examination of the right landing gear leg assembly revealed that the gear leg separated from its position in the landing gear box assembly and folded under the airplane. The bolt that secured the gear leg to the landing gear box assembly remained in place; however, the nut was found in the belly of the airplane. Although the hardware installed on the airplane’s main landing gear spring differed from the hardware specified in the airplane manufacturer’s parts catalog, the composition and hardness of the installed bolt were consistent with typical specifications for an AN-type bolt. However, the bolt and nut exhibited worn threads consistent with progressive wear over time rather than a sudden overload. The mechanic who performed a landing gear change about a year and a half before the accident stated that, although he did not recall the hardware used during the gear change, when he changes landing gear, he uses the hardware provided by the owner for installing the landing gear. Based on the condition of the nut and bolt, the worn hardware was likely re-used during the installation of the landing gear assembly. Re-use of the worn bolt and nut then allowed the hardware to fail under load during taxi, resulting in collapse of the landing gear.
Probable cause
Maintenance personnel’s reuse of worn hardware during the installation of the landing gear assembly and the hardware’s failure and subsequent separation of the gear leg from the landing gear box assembly during taxi.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC25LA030
- Event ID
- 20250403199961
- Case number
- ANC25LA030
- 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, coordinates, 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: ad1d0d99b28a18fba4eca81be59b3804b03760c292587a9325fda5ecc6851eef; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:47:37.728Z.