ANC03LA115 · Piper PA-18
Piper PA-18 · Accident: dragged wing, rotor, pod, float or tail/skid during takeoff
From Iliamna, AK to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC03LA115
- 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
- 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
- N3795Z
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Iliamna, 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
- Takeoff · roll/run
- 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
- Dragged wing, rotor, pod, float or tail/skid
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airline transport certificated pilot was departing a small lake in a float-equipped airplane to reposition onto a larger lake in the area. He said that as he applied takeoff power, the left wing was immediately lifted by gusty winds. He applied left aileron, but the airplane continued to roll to the right. The right wing contacted the water and the airplane either nosed, or rolled, over. The pilot indicated that gusty wind conditions from the north may have been affected by a hill adjacent to the lake. The pilot said that prior to takeoff from the remote lake, he utilized a satellite phone to obtain weather information for his planned destination, and also for the area of departure. The pilot said he learned that the destination had gusty winds and turbulence. The closest weather reporting station, located 30 miles away, had winds of 13 knots from the north.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane during the takeoff run, which resulted in the airplane nosing over in the water. Factors contributing to the accident were wind gusts, and the pilot's inadequate evaluation of the wind conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC03LA115
- Event ID
- 20030916X01548
- Case number
- ANC03LA115
- 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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2003-09-15.
- API snapshot SHA-256: e3d782a9b255078cddc4fb01fbfe7a4cd7c2d78cdf512d9228189f411ab85483; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:22:06.563Z.