ANC96LA105 · Piper PA-18
Piper PA-18 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure while taxiing
From Kotzebue, AK to Warren "Bud" Woods Palmer Municipal Airport (PAQ)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC96LA105
- 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
- N2561N
- Operator
- Tyrell G. Ross · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Possible conflict
- From Kotzebue, AKTo Warren "Bud" Woods Palmer Municipal Airport (PAQ), Palmer, 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
- Taxi · to runway
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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
- Landing gear, main gear › Improper
- Pilot in command › Maintenance, major repair, improper
- Pilot in command › Operation with known deficiencies in equipment, intentional
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that the left, over-sized Tundra tire deflated and the left wing subsequently struck the ground while he was taxiing for takeoff at Mc Grath, Alaska. The pilot was involved in an accident a week earlier with the same airplane when the main landing gear collapsed while landing at a rural mining airstrip. At the previous accident site, the pilot made unauthorized repairs to the landing gear and wing lift struts. He fashioned a main gear leg from iron water pipe, and taped boards to the lift struts. He then elected to fly the airplane to Palmer, Alaska, so that additional repairs could be made. He made an interim stop at Mc Grath for gas, but did not seek repairs from any aviation repair facility prior to his attempted departure. Discussion with Tundra tire experts disclosed that proper landing gear geometry is essential for safe operation. If the landing gear geometry is incorrect, additional side loads will be placed on the tire, which may cause it to rotate on the rim, slicing the valve stem and allowing the tire to deflate.
Probable cause
The improper and unauthorized repair of the main landing gear by the pilot, and the pilot's decision to operate the airplane with known deficiencies.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC96LA105
- Event ID
- 20001208X06140
- Case number
- ANC96LA105
- 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: a2f22f335974e305d4de931368208476ade4d3521c7c53799b7a63590a052a81; retrieved 2026-09-22T21:46:39.405Z.