ANC97FA002 · Piper PA-18
Piper PA-18 · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From an unrecorded airport to GEORGE GLACIER, AK
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC97FA002
- 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-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
- N64RS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo GEORGE GLACIER, 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 control in flight
- 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
- Stall; Wire, transmission; 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Compensation for wind conditions, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Stall, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was departing his 700 feet long grass strip in a tundra-tire/tail-wheel equipped airplane to transport a passenger to a hunting area. The airplane climbed to about 100 feet above the ground while in a slight right turn. The pilot described the airplane's tail as suddenly being pushed downward by a gust of wind. The airplane then descended in a right wing and nose low attitude toward the ground, through two strands of high voltage electrical wires. The pilot recalled seeing sparks emanating from the right wingtip. The airplane struck the ground in a small grove of trees 2/10 of a mile from the departure end of the runway, and a postcrash fire erupted. No mechanical malfunction of the engine was found. The pilot reported the wind conditions as light and variable. Wind conditions from an airport 1/2 mile northeast of the accident site, one half hour before the accident, were reported as 9 knots. One half hour after the accident, the wind conditions were 15 knots with gusts to 32 knots. Local residents reported strong gusty winds throughout the area. No evidence was found that the pilot had obtained an official weather briefing.
Probable cause
the pilot's inadequate compensation for wind conditions and failure to maintain adequate airspeed, which resulted in an inadvertent stall. The unfavorable wind condition was a related factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC97FA002
- Event ID
- 20001208X06826
- Case number
- ANC97FA002
- 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: 663b9ae09a37be1874fa1736826d8631d6286c9bfb9c31eb74165cc4bdd84a90; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:10:54.744Z.