ANC04LA060 · Cessna 180E
Cessna 180E · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during takeoff
From Kenai Municipal Airport (PAEN) to Fairbanks International Airport (PAFA)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC04LA060
- 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
Cessna 180E
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 180
- 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
- N5180
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kenai Municipal Airport (PAEN), Kenai, 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
- 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
- Loss of control on ground/water
- 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 › Compensation for wind conditions, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Directional control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Ground loop/swerve, inadvertent
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 in a tailwheel-equipped airplane. The pilot reported he was aware of a left crosswind that was near the limit for his airplane. The pilot indicated that he applied takeoff power and about 350 feet into the takeoff roll, the tailwheel lifted off the runway. The airplane began to veer to the left and the pilot pulled the engine power to idle and attempted to correct the left turn by application of brakes and flight controls. The airplane ground looped to the left, and the right wing struck the runway. The airplane then nosed over and received damage to the propeller, right wing, the vertical stabilizer, and the rudder. The wind conditions consisted of a direct left crosswind at 14 knots, with gusts to 21 knots.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate compensation for a crosswind condition and his failure to maintain directional control which resulted in an inadvertent ground loop and nose over. A factor contributing to the accident was a direct crosswind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC04LA060
- Event ID
- 20040607X00741
- Case number
- ANC04LA060
- 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 2004-06-03.
- API snapshot SHA-256: b9443b6c079f9ee6431481afcbaf1f965ee06d01d5f98e04f8e6c7bf5bdecacc; retrieved 2026-09-22T07:24:29.684Z.