ANC01LA061 · Cessna 172
Cessna 172 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather on approach
From Birchwood Airport (PABV) to Anderson Lake Airport (0AK1)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC01LA061
- 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
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
- N8054X
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Birchwood Airport (PABV), CHUGIAK, AKTo Anderson Lake Airport (0AK1), Wasilla, 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Proper glidepath, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private certificated pilot was planning a full-stop landing at a private airstrip. The gravel runway is 2,200 feet long and 40 feet wide. The final approach path to the runway threshold is over a small pond. The pilot said her first landing approach was too steep, and she did a go-around. On the second approach, about 50 to 100 feet lower than the normal approach path, the airplane encountered a downdraft over the pond, and the pilot added engine power. The airplane continued to descend and touched down on the main landing gear, about 300 feet short of the runway threshold. The nose wheel collapsed when it contacted the ground. The pilot said the cockpit immediately filled with smoke, and she exited the airplane via the right door. The airplane fuselage was consumed by fire.
Probable cause
An undershoot due to the pilot's failure to maintain a proper glide path during a VFR final approach to landing. A factor in the accident was a downdraft.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC01LA061
- Event ID
- 20010608X01115
- Case number
- ANC01LA061
- 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: 929ec7d144b9d93795d86dfc3f52d46d4ab47a1fbf5d42fa2a7ae224bdb2ab3b; retrieved 2026-09-22T11:55:08.145Z.