ANC05CA024 · Piper PA-19
Piper PA-19 · Accident: on ground/water collision with terrain/water while taxiing
From Big Lake, AK to Lake Hood Airport (Z41)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC05CA024
- 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-19
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-19
- 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
- N5417H
- Operator
- Chris T. Capps · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Big Lake, AKTo Lake Hood Airport (Z41), Lake Hood A/S, 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
- Taxi · to runway
- 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
- On ground/water collision with terrain/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 › Unsuitable terrain or takeoff/landing/taxi area, selected
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 pilot reported that he had landed on the frozen lake about an hour before the accident occurred. He said that the surface of the frozen lake was smooth and covered by about 2 inches of fresh snow, and that "flat light conditions" made it very difficult to discern any topographical features on the lake ice. The pilot reported that as he taxied the airplane in preparation for takeoff, it began to slide on the snow-covered ice, and he applied engine power in an attempt to gain effective rudder control. He said that as the airplane gained speed on the ice, the main landing gear wheels struck a large ice ridge, and the airplane was "pitched into the air." The pilot said that in an attempt to land the airplane and regain control, he closed the throttle, and the airplane descended rapidly. The airplane's main wheels struck the lake, and the left main landing gear partially collapsed. The airplane subsequently veered to the left, struck a stand of trees on the left side of the lake, and sustained substantial damage to the wings and fuselage.
Probable cause
The pilot's selection of an unsuitable takeoff/landing/taxi area, which resulted in an on-ground encounter with a berm, a loss of control on the ground, and collapse of the main landing gear. Factors associated with the accident were flat light conditions, and a berm.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC05CA024
- Event ID
- 20050317X00321
- Case number
- ANC05CA024
- 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: f81fbda04572560a064ccd6b0557edd8721b7ff40f1defce6a1ef280aa057c5a; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:19:53.878Z.