ANC01TA087 · de Havilland DHC-2
State of Alaska Dept. of Natural Resources de Havilland DHC-2 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Lake Hood Airport (Z41) to Lake Hood Airport (Z41)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC01TA087
- 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
- Government
- 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
de Havilland DHC-2
- Aircraft type
- de Havilland DHC-2
- 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
- N9262Z
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lake Hood Airport (Z41), Lake Hood Strip, AKTo Lake Hood Airport (Z41), Lake Hood Strip, 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
- Public Aircraft
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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 engine power
- 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
- Engine assembly, cylinder › Separation
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The certificated airline transport pilot, with two passengers aboard, was conducting an aerial timber survey. While in cruise flight about 1,000 feet above the ground, the engine began to backfire, run rough, and lose power. The engine then quit, and the pilot selected a gravel bar along a glacial fed river as an emergency landing area. During the emergency approach to landing, the airplane landed short of the intended landing site, touched down in about 3 feet of water, and nosed over. After recovery, an FAA airworthiness inspector examined the airplane. The inspector reported that the number seven cylinder was cracked, the number nine cylinder had no compression, and that about one cup of clear water was found within the carburetor float bowl. The inspector said that he was unable to determine if the cylinder damage, or the presence of water in the carburetor was a result of impact damage with the river water. When the engine was disassembled the number nine cylinder head was found separated from the cylinder barrel.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power during cruise due to the separation of an engine cylinder.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC01TA087
- Event ID
- 20010816X01715
- Case number
- ANC01TA087
- 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: bb75925029406cb3b531314805f311c182268fae611c9193e9bcbf1b4453c8cf; retrieved 2026-09-18T21:20:19.774Z.