ANC26LA022 · Cessna A185F
Cessna A185F · Accident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) during landing
From Wasilla Airport (PAWS) to Private Strip, AK
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC26LA022
- 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
- N94237
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wasilla Airport (PAWS), Wasilla, AKTo Private Strip, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 49 years (built 1977)
- 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 · 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
- 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 oper/perf/capability
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- 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 he was landing the wheel ski-equipped airplane on a remote snow-covered lake, shortly after touchdown he said the nose of the airplane began to yaw to the right. As the airplane was about 90° into the right turn the pilot heard a loud bang behind and to his right. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the right main landing gear axle had sheared off the gear leg and that the forward right bungee and cabled became disconnected which allowed the ski to impact the top of the right wing which resulted in substantial damage to the wing and fuselage. The pilot said he found a wind hardened snow berm that he believed the right ski impacted on landing which caused the right axle bolts to shear from the gear leg. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s loss of directional control during landing roll due to contact with wind hardened snow berm and subsequent failure of main landing gear.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC26LA022
- Event ID
- 20260330202711
- Case number
- ANC26LA022
- 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: c6f315c6f887de9e99c229edd6306c43c8e8bb1cd39b0c9d563f6d06cc20f66d; retrieved 2026-09-16T21:04:50.475Z.