ANC95FA169 · Piper PA-18A
Piper PA-18A · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
From Lake Hood Airport (Z41) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC95FA169
- 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
- 1 · 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-18A
- 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
- N7262D
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- In flight collision with terrain/water
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE CERTIFICATED PRIVATE PILOT DEPARTED ON A LOCAL AREA FLIGHT TO PRACTICE TOUCH AND GO LANDINGS IN THE AREA OF A 4,200 FOOT HIGH MOUNTAIN. THE AIRPLANE DID NOT RETURN AND AN AERIAL SEARCH WAS INITIATED. ON THE DAY OF THE ACCIDENT, A WITNESS IN AN AIRPLANE FLYING IN THE AREA, REPORTED TO SEARCH PERSONNEL THAT SHE OBSERVED AN AIRPLANE CREST THE MOUNTAIN TOP AND DESCEND DOWNSLOPE OUT OF VIEW, FOLLOWED BY A CLOUD OF DUST. SEARCH PERSONNEL REPORTED ONLY FINDING MISCELLANEOUS DEBRIS. THE WRECKAGE WAS LOCATED ABOUT 4 WEEKS LATER NEAR THE SUMMIT OF THE MOUNTAIN, PARTIALLY CONSUMED BY A POSTCRASH FIRE. IT WAS FOUND BY A PASSING HELICOPTER NESTLED IN A GREY AND BLACK COLORED ROCK OUTCROPPING. THE WRECKAGE PATH WAS ORIENTED ON AN EASTERLY HEADING AND WAS LOCATED ABOUT 100 YARDS SOUTH OF A SMALL AIRSTRIP AT THE TOP OF THE MOUNTAIN. THE AIRSTRIP IS ORIENTED ON A NORTH/SOUTH HEADING. ABOUT 27 MILES EAST AT ANCHORAGE, THE WIND WAS REPORTED TO BE FROM 250 DEGREES AT 4 KNOTS.
Probable cause
THE PILOT'S IMPROPER IN-FLIGHT PLANNING/DECISION AND FAILURE TO MAINTAIN ADEQUATE CLEARANCE OR ALTITUDE FROM THE MOUNTAINOUS TERRAIN, WHILE MANEUVERING NEAR AN AIRSTRIP.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC95FA169
- Event ID
- 20001207X04118
- Case number
- ANC95FA169
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1995-08-21.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 7a0d3797cd42483f3860840b9cd4424820b1726a9e0dca9166a614329fac4717; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:39:31.826Z.