ANC91LA053 · Cessna 172
Cessna 172 · Accident: nose over during landing
From Warren "Bud" Woods Palmer Municipal Airport (PAQ) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC91LA053
- 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
Cessna 172
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N3031U
- Operator
- Thomas E. Williams · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Warren "Bud" Woods Palmer Municipal Airport (PAQ), Palmer, 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 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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
- Terrain condition › Soft
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PILOT RECEIVED A WEATHER BRIEFING FROM THE PALMER FLIGHT SERVICE STATION AND REQUESTED INFORMATION ON ANY NOTAMS FOR THE CANTWELL AIRPORT. THE FLIGHT SERVICE STATION SPECIALIST CALLED FOR A COLLECTIVE REPORT WHICH AUTOMATICALLY DOES NOT INCLUDE ANY NOTAM INFORMATION. THE FLIGHT SERVICE SPECIALIST STATED THERE WERE NO NOTAMS SHOWING ON THE COMPUTER SCREEN, HOWEVER, SHE CAUTIONED THE PILOT ABOUT THE POOR CONDITIONS OF RUNWAYS DURING 'BREAKUP' AND SHE READ THE CAUTION LISTED IN THE ALASKA SUPPLEMENT UNDER AIRPORT REMARKS. THE PILOT LANDED AT CANTWELL AND THE AIRPLANE NOSED OVER ON THE RUNWAY. THE RUNWAY HAD BEEN MAINTAINED FOR THE USE OF SKI EQUIPPED AIRPLANES.
Probable cause
THE PILOT IN COMMAND'S POOR PREFLIGHT PLANNING/PREPARATION. A FACTOR IN THE ACCIDENT WAS THE SNOW COVERED RUNWAY.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC91LA053
- Event ID
- 20001212X16716
- Case number
- ANC91LA053
- 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 1991-04-13.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 9281a3dcc46cd5e6ff602ff4c472f9698083e72fa4eb09425e885371d25dca28; retrieved 2026-09-23T04:20:44.514Z.