ANC03GA020 · Aviat A-1B
Aviat A-1B · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From King Salmon Airport (PAKN) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC03GA020
- 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
- 1 · 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
Aviat A-1B
- Aircraft type
- Aviat A-1
- 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
- N57HY
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From King Salmon Airport (PAKN), King Salmon, 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
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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/spin
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The tundra tire-equipped airplane was being operated as a local, visual flight rules, public use, game management flight for the purpose of locating moose with data collection collars. According to the airplane's operator, a typical flight would require the pilot and observer to locate a collared moose, and then fly in the immediate vicinity of the moose to enable the equipment aboard the airplane to relay data from the moose's collar to a ground-based data collection site. There was no data transmission in progress at the time of the accident, however fresh moose foot prints were observed within 50 yards of the accident site. An on-site inspection of the airplane disclosed ground scars and crush lines on the airplane consistent with a near-vertical impact. The inspection disclosed no evidence of any preimpact mechanical anomalies with the airframe or engine, and a readout of data stored in the engine monitoring system installed on the airplane indicated that the engine had adequate fuel flow and combustion. The observer received head injuries in the accident, and was unable to provide any information about the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate airspeed which resulted in an in-flight collision with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC03GA020
- Event ID
- 20021224X05632
- Case number
- ANC03GA020
- 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. 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: 221a82575e0e4ee359b94f3edd3f1f0f12cb81c56beaab775be2743bc7e081a7; retrieved 2026-09-18T14:35:27.848Z.