ANC02TA036 · Piper PA-18
Piper PA-18 · Accident: on ground/water collision with terrain/water during landing
From Aniak Airport (PANI) to REINDEER LAKE, AK
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC02TA036
- 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
Piper PA-18
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-18
- 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
- N82735
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Aniak Airport (PANI), Aniak, AKTo REINDEER LAKE, 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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
- On ground/water collision with terrain/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
- 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, a Fish and Wildlife Protection Officer, was landing on the beach area of a lake, adjacent to a remote lodge. The pilot and passenger were concluding a cross-country public use flight to conduct a criminal investigation. During the landing roll, the right wingtip contacted willow bushes, pivoting the airplane to the right. The airplane received damage to the propeller, the tailwheel assembly, the rudder post, and a fuselage longeron.
Probable cause
The pilot's selection of unsuitable terrain for landing. A factor in the accident was the presence of high vegetation (willows) along the right side of the landing area.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC02TA036
- Event ID
- 20020529X00756
- Case number
- ANC02TA036
- 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: 8e6a14074cb56dac397979b4222e34d0986d9cefb1a76c923cf6e2522300033c; retrieved 2026-09-18T21:19:13.128Z.