ANC05LA065 · Piper PA-18-160
Piper PA-18-160 · Accident: on ground/water collision with terrain/water during landing
From Wasilla Airport (PAWS) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC05LA065
- 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-18-160
- 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
- N624MW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wasilla Airport (PAWS), Wasilla, 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
- 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 was landing his tundra-tire equipped tailwheel airplane at the conclusion of a 14 CFR Part 91 personal flight on a non-maintained dirt overrun of a hard-surfaced runway. During the landing roll, the tires encountered deep ruts and soft dirt, and the pilot stated that he was unable to maintain directional control. He indicated that the right brake felt flat and ineffective, and may have contributed to his difficulty in maintaining control. An aviation mechanic who repaired the airplane after the accident noted that the brake assembly had a slow fluid leak, and the braking action may have been diminished at the time of the accident. The mechanic said he replaced portions of the right brake assembly while repairing the airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot's selection of an unsuitable landing area, which resulted in a loss of control during the landing roll, and a collision with a ditch. A factor associated with the airplane was a leaking brake assembly and diminished braking efficiency.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC05LA065
- Event ID
- 20050505X00559
- Case number
- ANC05LA065
- 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 2005-04-28.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 5dca6aa8ba3a936d6205be84ff5d8dd1afcfed1c2d5ede962e3605563e33d87e; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:59:44.549Z.