ANC97TA095 · Piper PA-18-180
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Piper PA-18-180 · Accident: undershoot on approach
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC97TA095
- 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-18-180
- 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
- N3685Z
- Operator
- U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Undershoot
- 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
- Dual student › Proper glidepath, not maintained
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Supervision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The second pilot was a rated float plane pilot, but did not meet the criteria to act as pilot-in-command (PIC) by his employer, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). The PIC, who was also employed by the USFWS, was a certifcated flight instructor, and was giving additional instruction to the second pilot to meet the USFWS standards for PIC. The second pilot was flying at the time of the accident. The two pilots had been practicing touch-and-go landings on a lake. During the approach to land, the airplane's floats inadvertently touched on a flat, grassy area short of the water. Engine power was applied, and the airplane continued to the lake to make an uneventful landing. Postflight inspection disclosed a damaged fuselage near the left float's rear attachment point. The PIC believes the airplane may have encountered a downdraft just prior to touching down on the grassy area.
Probable cause
The second pilot/dual student's failure to maintain a proper glidepath, and the pilot-in-command/flight instructor's inadequate supervision. A factor associated with the accident was a downdraft.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC97TA095
- Event ID
- 20001208X08052
- Case number
- ANC97TA095
- 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: 0c5552c19ac290cae1dde6502bef09730ed72b3137533aedbe59d84817779c60; retrieved 2026-09-22T19:22:34.040Z.