ANC05CA152 · Piper PA-18
Piper PA-18 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Wiseman, AK to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC05CA152
- 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
- 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
- N9950Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wiseman, 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
- Pilot in command › Unsuitable terrain or takeoff/landing/taxi area, selected
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private certificated pilot was conducting Title 14, CFR Part 91 flight operations in a remote area in support of his hunting/guiding business. At the request of an Alaska State Trooper, the pilot landed in a remote drainage to pick up a stranded hunter who had been at a camp for the previous five days when another hunt/guide pilot damaged the propeller of an airplane. The accident pilot reported that the landing area was short, he had difficulty stopping, and his airplane nosed over in swampy, grassy area. After the accident, the Alaska State Trooper flew the pilot, and the stranded hunter out, and then flew the accident pilot and a mechanic back in. The mechanic changed the propeller and replaced one wing lift strut. The pilot reported that the landing area was, "...not a good place to land, and I would not have gone in there if it had not been a rescue situation."
Probable cause
The pilot's selection of unsuitable terrain for landing, which resulted in a nose over during the landing roll. Factors contributing to the accident were a short landing area, and pressure to conduct the flight, which the pilot stated was a rescue situation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC05CA152
- Event ID
- 20051028X01751
- Case number
- ANC05CA152
- 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. 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: 72d529f5df41fa8df117c889eda649cf2264071ce6540a8c0b80a6359894210e; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:29:46.887Z.