ANC02FA042 · Piper PA-18-150
Piper PA-18-150 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Merrill Field (PAMR) to Goose Bay Airport (Z40)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC02FA042
- 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
Piper PA-18-150
- 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
- N6969H
- Operator
- Benjamin M Wilkinson · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Merrill Field (PAMR), Anchorage, AKTo Goose Bay Airport (Z40), 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
- 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
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Fuel tank selector position, improper
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of the accident airplane was flying at 600 feet msl crossing a body of water when he noticed a loss of engine rpm. He pulled on the carburetor heat, and switched from the right wing fuel tank to the left wing fuel tank. The engine rpm increased momentarily, and then the engine quit. The pilot turned toward land, and made an emergency landing. During landing the airplane encountered a dirt berm, the left main landing gear collapsed, and the airplane nosed over. The meteorological conditions were, in part: temperature, 9 degrees Celsius; dew point, 7 degrees Celsius, with visible moisture. Under these conditions, a carburetor icing probability chart reflects serious icing at any power setting. During the postaccident examination the fuel selector valve was found with the left wing fuel tank selected. There was no usable fuel found in the left wing tank, and no evidence of any fuel leak was discovered.
Probable cause
The pilot's selection of a fuel tank that did not contain a usable quantity of fuel. Factors associated with the accident are the dirt berm, meteorological conditions conducive to carburetor icing, and carburetor ice.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC02FA042
- Event ID
- 20020612X00854
- Case number
- ANC02FA042
- 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: c73b01bad4b0ba51bfb1878f1db2cb64fe49e195dc0832becbd6848eb634597e; retrieved 2026-09-22T10:53:13.059Z.