ANC96LA060 · Piper PA-18
Piper PA-18 · Accident: loss of engine power during initial climb
From an unrecorded airport to Soldotna, AK
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC96LA060
- 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
- N1930A
- Operator
- Paul G. Isaak · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Soldotna, AK
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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 engine power
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Fuel starvation; Tree(s)
- 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
- Fluid, fuel › Starvation
- Fuel system, line › Bent
- Pilot in command › Maintenance, rebuild/remanufacture, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The certificated private pilot was departing a private 2,000 feet long grass airstrip. Before departure, the pilot selected the left fuel tank. During the initial climb, the engine suddenly quit about 100 feet in the air. The pilot selected an emergency landing area, and the airplane collided with several trees during the landing. The pilot indicated that the remanufactured engine that he installed had accured 25 hours. The airplane had been rebuilt by the pilot, who was not a certificated airframe or powerplant mechanic. The pilot did not possess any airworthiness documentation for the airplane. A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed a kink in the fuel line from the left fuel tank. The fuel line from the fuel strainer to the carburetor was 1/4 inch in diameter. The standard size was 3/8 inch. The fuel caps on each tank were required to have a 3/8 inch vent line. The installed caps had a 1/4 inch vent.
Probable cause
fuel starvation due to a kinked fuel supply line from the left main tank, and the pilot's improper rebuild/remanufacture of the airplane. A smaller than standard fuel line from the fuel strainer to the carburetor, a smaller than standard fuel cap vent, and a lack of mechanic certification were factors in the accident.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC96LA060
- Event ID
- 20001208X05507
- Case number
- ANC96LA060
- 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: b425d8adb570490b61c1ace7383e35c96adf79e15d213f57ede5093af2d2339a; retrieved 2026-09-22T22:34:04.528Z.