ANC01LA038 · Forney F-1A
Forney F-1A · Accident: nose down during landing
From Merrill Field (PAMR) to Cordova Municipal Airport (CKU)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC01LA038
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
Forney F-1A
- Aircraft type
- Forney F-1
- 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
- N3032G
- Operator
- William T. Sigler · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Merrill Field (PAMR), Anchorage, AKTo Cordova Municipal Airport (CKU), 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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 down
- 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 › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Unsuitable terrain or takeoff/landing/taxi area, selected
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial certificated pilot landed a wheel airplane on a runway covered with several feet of snow. The airplane nosed down, and received damage to the left wing, the left aileron, the nose wheel strut assembly, and the firewall. The runway had accumulated between 4 and 5 feet of snow, and it had not been plowed. According to the Airport Facility Directory/Alaska Supplement, the description of the airport contains a caution, that states: "Runway condition not monitored, recommend visual inspection prior to landing. No winter maintenance. Closed from first snowfall until after breakup." The airplane was found the following day of the accident, unoccupied, by a local police officer. The police officer located persons at a local hotel who were pointed out by other patrons as being the pilot and passenger of the accident airplane. When the pilot was asked about the circumstances of the accident, the pilot refused all information, including his identity, and that of the passenger. The pilot referred all questions to his attorney. After contacting the pilot's attorney, no additional information was provided to the police.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight planning/preparation, and his selection of unsuitable terrain for landing. A factor in the accident was snow-covered terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC01LA038
- Event ID
- 20010330X00674
- Case number
- ANC01LA038
- 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, coordinates. 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: 0c331ab67599932b8ab7b495779b6001376f690683d6d988bbf1f78fa9354048; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:08:53.298Z.