ANC05FA008 · Piper PA-18
Piper PA-18 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather while maneuvering
From Lake Hood Seaplane Base (PALH) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC05FA008
- 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
- 1 · 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
- Instrument 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
- N4126E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lake Hood Seaplane Base (PALH), Anchorage, 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- In flight encounter with weather
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
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 of a float-equipped airplane was the second of two, unrelated Piper airplanes that requested a special VFR (SVFR) clearance from a seaplane base within 1 minute of each other, for a local flight over an ocean inlet that was about 2.3 nautical miles wide. The weather conditions at the airport included overcast skies at 400 feet, and a visibility of 2 miles in mist. About 2 minutes after departure, the accident pilot requested to return to the seaplane base, stating in part, "it's really thick out here." No further communication was received from the pilot. The pilot of the first Piper airplane to depart also decided to return, and spotted the tail of the accident Piper protruding from the water about mid-channel of the inlet. The first Piper pilot notified air traffic control (ATC) of the situation, and then landed on the water to render any assistance. The first Piper was not equipped with any position locating equipment, consequently, the accident location was an estimate by the pilot. The accident Piper sank within about 2 minutes, and no survivor was observed. The accident pilot and the airplane have not been found. A witness located on the shore of the inlet saw the accident Piper appear from the base of a fog bank that was over the inlet. The airplane descended out of the fog about 100 feet above the water in a left bank of about 45 degrees, and about 20 degrees nose down. The airplane descended until it collided with the water about mid-channel, impacting the water with the left wing first, and immediately began to sink. Water search efforts were initiated that involved the use of a 2-crew hovercraft, a Coast Guard rigid-hull inflatable boat (RIB), a fire department rescue RIB, a commercial tug, and a volunteer underwater mapping vessel. The use of helicopters was unsuccessful because of low ceilings and low visibility. The search for the accident pilot and airplane was suspended by the fire department about 1.5 hours after the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane due to spatial disorientation, which resulted in an uncontrolled descent and collision with water during maneuvering flight. Factors contributing to the accident were fog and low ceilings.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC05FA008
- Event ID
- 20041021X01670
- Case number
- ANC05FA008
- 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: a12c835e83333daccaea7983a64c5c91fdcde48a21a17d1412cbc071c57c89b0; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:18:32.153Z.