ANC99LA053 · Piper PA-18
Piper PA-18 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Lake Hood Airport (Z41) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC99LA053
- 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
- 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
Piper PA-18
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-18
- 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
- N7696D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lake Hood Airport (Z41), AKTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- First occurrenceThe 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/water
- 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
- Pilot in command › Compensation for wind conditions, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The solo private pilot was landing on runway 33 in a tailwheel equipped airplane on a paved runway. The pilot said that wind conditions at the time of the accident required that the pilot correct for a 10 knot, left crosswind from 240 degrees. The pilot stated that during the landing roll, a gust of wind pushed the airplane to the right, and he overcorrected to the left. He added that the right main wheel 'grabbed' and the airplane ground looped to the left. During the ground loop, the right wing struck a runway light, and sustained substantial damage. The pilot noted that there were no preaccident mechanical anomalies with the airplane. The closest weather observation station is Merrill Field. On April 15, at 0853, an Aviation Routine Weather Report (METAR) was reporting in part: Sky conditions and ceiling, 6,500 scattered; visibility, 10 statute miles; wind, 320 degrees (true) at 5 knots.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate compensation for crosswind conditions. Factors associated with the accident were a crosswind, and an inadvertent ground loop.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC99LA053
- Event ID
- 20001205X00411
- Case number
- ANC99LA053
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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. 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: 9f2abaa132633f0105f3dd278a7a95f192057c084c9c86aff75cb0df4eb889fe; retrieved 2026-09-22T15:28:20.840Z.