ANC03LA083 · Maule M-4
Maule M-4 · Accident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during initial climb
From Dahl Creek Airport (DCK) to Fairbanks International Airport (PAFA)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC03LA083
- 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
Maule M-4
- Aircraft type
- Maule M-4
- 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
- N40344
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dahl Creek Airport (DCK), KOBUK, AKTo Fairbanks International Airport (PAFA), Fairbanks, 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
- Partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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
- Fuel contamination; 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
- Fluid, fuel › Contamination, other than water
- Pilot in command › Fuel supply, inadvertent use
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Prior to departure on the accident flight, the private certificated pilot fueled the airplane with 14 gallons of fuel from a 55 gallon drum that he stored at his cabin. He conducted a preflight of the airplane, which included draining the airplane's fuel sumps, and found no water in the sumps. After liftoff, the engine power began to decrease slowly. The pilot said the engine did not have any roughness or unusual sounds, but the rpm decreased to about 2,200 and the airplane began to lose altitude. About 200 feet above the ground, the pilot began to turn to the north in an effort to return to the runway, but the airspeed was decreasing. The airplane collided with numerous trees and sustained damage to the wings, lift struts, elevator, and the right main landing gear. Following the accident, the pilot examined the fuel from the airplane. He said he discovered that the fuel he placed in the airplane before departure was diesel fuel. He reported that his storage drum was mislabeled.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadvertent use of diesel fuel in a gasoline engine which resulted in a partial loss of engine power, and subsequent collision with trees during a forced landing after takeoff. A factor contributing to the accident was the pilot's inadequate preflight inspection of the airplane that failed to detect the presence of diesel fuel in the fuel supply.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC03LA083
- Event ID
- 20030804X01255
- Case number
- ANC03LA083
- 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: 0ebc7308b3ab7bee4a5e226f43f14a7ef30791b6a754762af4085c56e98116a9; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:25:01.734Z.