ANC05LA052 · Cub Crafters PA-18
Cub Crafters PA-18 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Fairbanks International Airport (FAI) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC05LA052
- 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
Cub Crafters PA-18
- Aircraft type
- Cub Crafters 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
- N955DW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fairbanks International Airport (FAI), Fairbanks, 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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
- Dual student › Directional control, not maintained
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Supervision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The certificated flight instructor was providing tailwheel instruction to the private pilot/airplane owner. While landing on runway 19L, a 6,500 foot long by 100 foot wide hard-surfaced runway, the instructor said that the airplane swerved to the left and the private pilot made a correction to the right by completely deflecting the right rudder. The instructor stated he also applied the right brake in addition to ensuring that the rudder was all the way to the right, but the airplane continued to the left. The right main landing gear subsequently collapsed, and the right wing contacted the runway, sustaining structural damage to the main spar. The instructor stated that he wasn't sure, but thought it possible the left brake had heated up, and was dragging during the accident landing. Postaccident inspection of the airplane by an FAA inspector disclosed no evidence of any mechanical malfunction of the left brake or wheel assembly. Wind at the time of the accident was reported to be from 163 degrees (magnetic) at 5 knots.
Probable cause
The flight instructor's inadequate supervision of the flight, and the dual student's failure to maintain directional control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC05LA052
- Event ID
- 20050329X00374
- Case number
- ANC05LA052
- 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: 0f54c0abf347e7cd145828787a0135551ce870dfb29c5d01a1ad5df490338b2e; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:08:21.983Z.