Alaska Airlines Flight 9623
Boeing 737 890 · Accident: loss of control on ground while taxiing
From Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (PANC) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA26LA102
- 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
- 0
- 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
- Airline
- 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
Boeing 737 890
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 737
- 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
- N583AS
- Operator
- Alaska Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (PANC), Anchorage, AKTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 19 years (built 2007)
- 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 121: Air Carrier
- 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
- 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
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Alaska Airlines cargo flight 9623 from Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (ANC), Anchorage, Alaska to Kodiak Airport (ADQ), Kodiak, Alaska collided with two stationary baggage carts while taxiing on the contaminated (slush, ice and water) ramp at ADQ. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the aft right cargo door and frame. There were no injuries.
According to the flight crew, the airplane landed uneventfully on runway 26, then taxied to the ramp via taxiway F. They reported the braking action on the runway as good to medium, and that the brakes were effective while on taxiway F.
Figure 1. Airport Diagram. (Source: Federal Aviation Administration)
After turning left from taxiway F to the ramp, the captain noticed that “eventually the braking action went to nil” and when he attempted to stop, the airplane weather vaned (nose to the left) and struck the ground equipment at the airplane’s right rear side.
Figure 2. Damage to cargo door. (Source: Alaska Airlines)
The reported accident time was 1253 Alaska Standard Time. The weather reported at ADQ at the time of the accident included moderate rain and mist, temperature 39° F, and wind from 120° at 15 knots with gusts to 25 knots. Field condition reports (FICONs), provided in Notices To Airmen for ADQ, described the condition of different surfaces around the airport. The flight crew had these FICONs, however the most recently available reports were issued several hours prior to the accident, including:
At 0531, all of the apron/ramp area was described as having 2 inches of wet snow; At 0715, taxiway F contained ice; At 0825, runway 26 was described as 100 percent of the surface being wet.
The flight crew reported that at the time of the accident, the ramp surface initially appeared as though it had “a lot of slush.” After the airplane came to a stop, they noticed standing water over ice on the ramp. The flight crew had a difficult time walking on the ramp and requested sand be spread in the area between the airplane and the terminal.
Probable cause
The reduced surface friction of the contaminated ramp which led to a loss of directional control during taxi.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA26LA102
- Event ID
- 20260128202353
- Case number
- DCA26LA102
- 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: c5c4d99ec3ab29d61416d409d7dcb548cb2be6df7d08dc4759cd069696bc6bcd; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:42:02.254Z.