ANC03LA014 · Cessna 172
Cessna 172 · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Merrill Field (PAMR) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC03LA014
- 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
- N80948
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Merrill Field (PAMR), Anchorage, AKTo not recorded
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
- Stall/mush; Wire, transmission; 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Ice/frost removal from aircraft, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Stall/mush, inadvertent
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 private pilot performed a preflight of the airplane that included his use of a broom to brush frost from the wings and tail. He reported that he used hot water and a squeegee to remove ice and water on the tail, windshield, and wings. The pilot then taxied the airplane to a fueling facility on the airport ramp. After fueling, the pilot said that an engine run-up and a flight control check before departure were normal. He then taxied for takeoff, and began the takeoff roll. The pilot rotated the airplane into a climb attitude at 50 knots. The airplane engine was developing 2,500 rpm, and the airplane began to climb at 65 knots. After the airplane traveled beyond the departure end of the runway, where the terrain dropped away from the runway surface, the pilot indicated that the airplane immediately began to crab to the left and the flight controls felt sluggish or mushy. He began a slow climb, but said the flight controls became even more sluggish, resembling an imminent stall. The pilot reported the sound of the engine began to drop as though it was losing power. He began a slow turn to the left and the right wing dropped slightly, but he leveled the wings. The pilot reported that the airplane began to descend in a stalled condition toward an area of trees. He said he pulled the engine power to off, just prior to contacting several electrical wires, and then numerous trees. The airplane came to rest upright, 1/2 mile south of the departure end of the runway with damage to the landing gear, fuselage, wings, and empennage. Another airplane owner, who was working on his airplane while it was parked at the same facility where the accident airplane was parked, commented that there was "Major frost and ice build up on most airplanes. Mine and others around me [were] unflyable due to this." A METAR at the departure airport was reporting in part: Temperature, 34 degrees F; dew point, 27 degrees F. A postaccident examination of the airplane's engine did not discover any evidence of mechanical malfunction.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to adequately remove frost/ice from the airplane which resulted in an inadvertent stall/mush during the takeoff/initial climb.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC03LA014
- Event ID
- 20021118X05478
- Case number
- ANC03LA014
- 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: cc125f86f706f00f9431484cc13097a8ec83c6dc64db1e8320da6e0de2dda735; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:35:04.914Z.