ANC05FA070 · Taylorcraft F-19
Taylorcraft F-19 · Accident: loss of engine power during initial climb
From Chena Marina Airport (AK28) to Bettles Airport (BTT)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC05FA070
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Taylorcraft F-19
- Aircraft type
- Taylorcraft F-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
- N3691T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chena Marina Airport (AK28), Fairbanks, AKTo Bettles Airport (BTT), Bettles, 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
- Initial climb
- 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 engine power
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Stall/spin
- 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 › Airspeed(vs), not maintained
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot and sole passenger were departing a private airpark on a 14 CFR Part 91 personal cross-country flight when the engine lost power. Witnesses and the passenger, a private pilot, said the airplane was between 300-500 feet above the ground at the time of the power loss, when the pilot made a steep, abrupt, 180 degree turn to return to the airport. The airplane immediately entered a stall/spin, and the pilot, who had prior aerobatic training, made a partial recovery, stopping the spin rotation, and returning the airplane to a nearly level attitude before impact. The airplane crashed in a marshy area, in a level attitude, with a high vertical velocity. The area north of the airpark was essentially flat, mostly unoccupied, with minimal obstructions. There were several areas suitable for a low altitude emergency landing ahead of, and in close proximity to, the accident airplane's original departure flight path. According to the passenger (the airplane's co-owner and pilot's wife), the airplane had a history of unexplained power losses on takeoff, and the pilot had successfully returned to the departure runway at various sites on at least two, possibly three, prior occasions. On one power loss at a different airport, the passenger was flying, and the accident pilot took the controls and made a steep turn back to the airport. Once on the ground, the engine appeared to run normally. The passenger indicated that on the accident flight, like previous flights, the loss of engine power was abrupt, "like pulling the engine to idle" but the engine did not stop completely. A review of the airplane's maintenance records disclosed that in response to the power losses, an engine magneto and a cylinder had been replaced/repaired, and the carburetor adjusted and flow tested. The airplane had accrued 2.3 hours since its last annual inspection. Postaccident inspection of the engine and related systems, including a flow test of the carburetor and complete disassembly of the engine, disclosed no evidence of any preimpact mechanical problem.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain a minimum airspeed during a low-altitude turn to return to the airport, and his improper in-flight decision to initiate a steep, low altitude turn, which resulted in an inadvertent stall/spin, and an in-flight collision with terrain. Contributing to the accident was the loss of engine power for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC05FA070
- Event ID
- 20050506X00563
- Case number
- ANC05FA070
- 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 2005-05-01.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 3f7f39a8cd3e2591f9692cc67afe0b6219331c0300aca5a1fb322723ce2055c3; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:04:04.177Z.