ANC04LA033 · Piper PA-15
Piper PA-15 · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Skwentna, AK to Merrill Field (PAMR)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC04LA033
- 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-15
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-15
- 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
- N4492H
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Skwentna, AKTo Merrill Field (PAMR), Anchorage, 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 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
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private certificated pilot reported he was in cruise flight, about 800 feet agl, when the ski-equipped airplane began an uncommanded left turn. He applied right aileron control in an attempt to straighten the airplane, but the airplane's left bank became increasingly steep. He also applied right rudder to prevent the airplane from becoming inverted. He said the airplane was in a left descending spiral, and he decided to land as soon as possible. He selected an emergency landing area on a small frozen lake, but was unable to achieve his selected spot. He then selected a stand of trees, and during the landing, the airplane's wings, landing gear, and fuselage received extensive damage. The pilot said that the entire emergency event lasted about one minute. The airplane was rebuilt about 5 months before the accident, and had accrued about 2 hours of operation since the rebuild. The airplane skis were installed just prior to the accident flight. The airplane was disassembled and recovered from the accident site. The airplane fuselage and components were examined by NTSB and FAA personnel. No evidence of a flight control system malfunction was found. The ski retention cables and springs exhibited no anomalies.
Probable cause
An in-flight loss of control for an undetermined reason, which resulted in a forced landing and in-flight collision with trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC04LA033
- Event ID
- 20040303X00257
- Case number
- ANC04LA033
- 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: 93587460c7c2f5b79a907454c30029168ece256887fa284eaffb1b5acf452644; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:17:17.481Z.