ANC04LA017 · Piper PA-12
Piper PA-12 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Togiak Airport (TOG) to Togiak Airport (TOG)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC04LA017
- 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-12
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-12
- 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
- N3624M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Togiak Airport (TOG), Togiak, AKTo Togiak Airport (TOG), Togiak, 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The certificated commercial pilot reported that while in cruise flight over tree-covered terrain, he noted a rough running engine and a slight reduction in engine rpm. Engine emergency procedures did not remedy the engine roughness, which was followed by a rapid loss of engine power, and subsequent loss of altitude. The pilot selected a snow and tree-covered area as a forced landing site. During touch down on the soft, snow-covered terrain, the right main landing gear collapsed, the airplane pivoted to the left, and the left wing struck a stand of trees. The airplane sustained structural damage to the left wing and fuselage. A postaccident inspection of the airplane did not reveal a reason for the loss of engine power.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to an undetermined reason that resulted in a forced landing, a collapse of the main landing gear, and a collision with trees. A factor associated with the accident was the lack of suitable terrain for a forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC04LA017
- Event ID
- 20040112X00051
- Case number
- ANC04LA017
- 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: 417a891b82132e2a0aa0dd364e0bafed0336f58b20cb109d56bf47426db35499; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:18:29.778Z.