ANC98TA128 · Piper PA-18
Piper PA-18 · Accident: nose over during takeoff
From Fairbanks International Airport (FAI) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC98TA128
- 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
- Government
- 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
- N74996
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fairbanks International Airport (FAI)To 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
- Public Aircraft
- 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
- Takeoff · rejected takeoff
- 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
- Nose over
- 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 › Aborted takeoff, delayed
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The certificated commercial pilot was conducting a public use flight in a remote area to inspect a small airstrip used by hunters. The airstrip was oriented north/south, and was about 650 feet long. During a landing at the airstrip, the pilot said the wind was from the south about 18 knots. After inspecting the airstrip, the pilot prepared to depart toward the south. The pilot reported that several trees, about 20 feet tall, were located at the south end of the airstrip. The pilot began a takeoff, and about halfway down the airstrip, he lowered the flaps. The airplane momentarily became airborne, but the pilot said he recognized the airplane was not going to clear the trees. He then raised the flaps, and applied heavy braking when the airplane again touched down. The airplane nosed over at the end of the airstrip. The airplane received damage to the propeller, tail assembly, and the fuselage.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight planning/preparation, and his delay in aborting the takeoff. Factors in the accident were a short runway area for takeoff, trees located at the end of the runway, and the pilot's excessive application of brakes.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC98TA128
- Event ID
- 20001211X10757
- Case number
- ANC98TA128
- 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: df84e42c7a14705373f17ae33be00d0a52cc60bbd6ffe56daca07009b803eafe; retrieved 2026-09-18T21:21:25.312Z.