Tundra Piper PA-18 accident
Piper PA-18 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From AK to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC98LA054
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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
- N8578D
- Operator
- Tundra
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From AKTo 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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
- 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
- Fuel system › Contamination, water
- Pilot in command › Aircraft preflight, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The certificated commercial pilot was conducting an aerial moose survey for the State of Alaska. The passenger was a wildlife biologist employed by the State of Alaska. The pilot said that while in cruise flight, about 500 feet above the ground, all engine power was lost. Attempts to restore engine power were unsuccessful, and he turned the airplane to avoid rising terrain. During the subsequent forced landing, the airplane collided with trees. The airplane received substantial damage to the wings and fuselage. A Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) airworthiness inspector, inspected the airplane wreckage, and obtained a fluid sample from the fuel system gascolator. The sample exhibited two obvious layers of separated liquid. The top layer consisted of a bluish liquid, consistent with the color of 100LL aviation fuel. The lower layer consisted of a clear liquid which appeared to be water. The NTSB investigator-in-charge tested the clear fluid with water finding paste. The sample tested positive for water.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight of the airplane's fuel system, and presence of water in the fuel system.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC98LA054
- Event ID
- 20001211X09974
- Case number
- ANC98LA054
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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: 8c564cbdeacbe36b95691d519e9301f95c00675ae825474575b9b5e912e60f2f; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:08:52.258Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N8578D; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.