ANC02FA038 · Piper PA-18
Piper PA-18 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather during initial climb
From Lime Village Airport (2AK) to Birchwood Airport (BCV)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC02FA038
- 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
- 2 · 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
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
- N4347Z
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lime Village Airport (2AK), Lime Village, AKTo Birchwood Airport (BCV), Lime Village, 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Weather evaluation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The certificated commercial pilot, with one passenger aboard, was departing on a cross-country personal flight from a remote, 1,300 foot-long, gravel-covered airstrip. A commercial pilot witness reported that as the accident airplane started its takeoff run to the southeast, the airplane's engine sounded "normal" as if it was producing full power. He added that as soon as the airplane began its takeoff roll, he saw a large thunderstorm cell approaching the airstrip from the northeast. High winds from the northeast and very heavy rain showers preceded the fast moving thunderstorm cell. The witness estimated that the fast moving thunderstorm cell passed over the departure end of the airstrip just as the accident airplane was departing. The airplane subsequently collided with tree-covered terrain about 1,500 feet beyond the departure end of the airstrip. A postcrash fire destroyed the airplane wreckage. Examination of the airplane revealed no evidence of any preimpact mechanical anomalies.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate evaluation of weather and his inability to maintain aircraft control. A contributing factor was high winds due to thunderstorm outflow activity.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC02FA038
- Event ID
- 20020529X00759
- Case number
- ANC02FA038
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2002-05-27.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 3142b404cebf5085e68940c7b6c1c9c01cc2b6ff9116d046b0e755c30d832cea; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:00:41.891Z.