ANC97LA079 · Piper J-5
Piper J-5 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC97LA079
- 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 J-5
- Aircraft type
- Piper J-5
- 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
- N31164
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- 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 › In-flight planning/decision, improper
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Wasilla, AK, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported a loss of engine power and subsequent forced landing in a gravel pit. He said he did not know why the engine quit, but said one of the fuel tanks still had fuel. Prior to landing in the gravel pit, the pilot said he made an emergency approach to an airstrip, and was just about to land on the runway, when the engine started again. He said he should have landed anyway, but elected to go around and fly to his own airstrip. Soon after he left the airstrip, the engine quit, and he landed in the gravel pit. A state trooper who interviewed the pilot reported the pilot told him he had just changed two cylinders on the airplane's engine, and was on a test flight. The noncertificated pilot is not an aviation mechanic, and in his report he did not indicate he had any flight experience, or that the airplane had received any of the required inspections. He did relate that he routinely flies the airplane from his private, rural airstrip.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power for an undetermined reason, and the noncertificated pilot's decision to perform a go-around after a suitable landing site had been attained. A factor associated with the accident was the rough and uneven terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC97LA079
- Event ID
- 20001208X07844
- Case number
- ANC97LA079
- 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 1997-05-29.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ca03e3ba6026af1fbb98247fde714e14843619ae8f513148b1411cfefe8e80ed; retrieved 2026-09-22T19:33:17.109Z.