ANC00LA060 · Piper PA-12
Piper PA-12 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather during initial climb
From Anderson Lake Airport (0AK1) to Merle K (Mudhole) Smith Airport (PACV)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC00LA060
- 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-12
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-12
- 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
- N49EB
- Operator
- Benjamin P. Hancock · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Anderson Lake Airport (0AK1)To Merle K (Mudhole) Smith Airport (PACV), Cordova, 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- In flight encounter with weather
- 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 › Compensation for wind conditions, inadequate
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Wasilla, AK, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilot, holder of a student pilot certificate, was departing from a private airstrip with two passengers. A witness reported the airplane encountered a wind shear at tree top level, and crashed on the runway. An Alaska State Trooper responded to the accident scene and spoke with the pilot. The pilot told the trooper that he was planning to go hunting. The pilot said that he had accrued about 300 hours, and he also told the trooper that the airplane's annual inspection was expired. An FAA inspector responded to the accident scene. When he arrived, the pilot, with others assisting, were disassembling the airplane. The inspector reported that the damage to the airplane consisted of wrinkling of both sides of the fuselage. In addition, the airplane had damage to the right wing lift strut, the main landing gear was folded upward under the airplane, and the propeller was bent. The inspector said that the pilot refused to talk with him about the accident. The NTSB IIC received a telephone call from the pilot later the day of the accident. When asked about the details of the accident, the pilot refused to provide his name or any additional information. The NTSB Northwest Field Office received an NTSB Pilot/Operator report from the pilot's address of record. The form was unsigned, and indicated that after takeoff, the airplane lost lift when the wind direction changed at tree-top level. The takeoff was then aborted. FAA records indicate the pilot received a private pilot certificate six days after the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate compensation for wind conditions during takeoff. A factor in the accident was a sudden wind shift.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC00LA060
- Event ID
- 20001212X20937
- Case number
- ANC00LA060
- 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: c3accae2c4cb3166b3eceb65b42c1db0a60f7147974028d8b4a52edfa7797a78; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:13:40.470Z.