ANC99LA103 · Cessna 152
Cessna 152 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during takeoff
From Elmendorf Air Force Base (EDF) to Elmendorf Air Force Base (EDF)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC99LA103
- 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 152
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 152
- 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
- N95031
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Possible conflict
- From Elmendorf Air Force Base (EDF), ELMENDORF AFB, AKTo Elmendorf Air Force Base (EDF), Anchorage, AK
- 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
- Takeoff · roll/run
- 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 control on ground/water
- 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
- Atc personnel(lcl/gnd/clnc) › Atc clearance, improper
- Pilot in command › Directional control, not possible
- Pilot in command › Wake turbulence, encountered
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The solo student pilot, on her first cross-country flight, was departing on runway 19R. Just after rotation, the airplane veered to the left, and went off the left side of the 7,575 feet long by 150 foot wide runway. The airplane came to rest in a ditch that borders the runway, and sustained substantial damage to the wings and fuselage. The pilot stated that prior to her being cleared for takeoff, a DeHavilland DHC-8 departed from the opposite direction on the same runway. She said that about 2 minutes elapsed between the larger aircraft's departure, and her departure. The Air Traffic Controller's Manual (FAA order 7110.65M) relating to wake turbulence application, states that a 3-minute interval be observed between departures of large and small aircraft, and the issuance of a wake turbulence advisory before clearing the aircraft for takeoff. The manual identifies a DeHavilland DHC-8 as a large turboprop aircraft, and a Cessna 152 as a small aircraft. Review of air-ground radio communications tapes revealed that the total time separation between the two departures was 1 minute, 49 seconds, with no issuance of a wake turbulence advisory.
Probable cause
The loss of control due to wake turbulence, and the issuance of an improper takeoff clearance by air traffic control personnel. A factor associated with the accident was air traffic control personnel's failure to issue a safety advisory.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC99LA103
- Event ID
- 20001212X19397
- Case number
- ANC99LA103
- 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: ea47b2f16206f7ea070fab7466fda132216dee33c0cd9449a5f9720c133fc988; retrieved 2026-09-22T14:20:51.522Z.