ANC06FA080 · Piper PA-12
Piper PA-12 · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Lake Hood Seaplane Base (PALH) to Lake Hood Seaplane Base (PALH)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC06FA080
- 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
Piper PA-12
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-12
- 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
- N7658H
- Operator
- Michael T. Lawler · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lake Hood Seaplane Base (PALH), Anchorage, AKTo Lake Hood Seaplane Base (PALH), Anchorage, 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
- Maneuvering
- 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 in flight
- 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
- 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
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 certificated pilot departed with a passenger in a float-equipped airplane for the purpose of dropping food packages to a group of hikers at a remote cabin. After arrival in the area, the pilot performed two low-level passes. On the third pass, the passenger, in the rear seat of the airplane, began dropping packages. The airplane then made a turn, and flew between the cabin and the side of a mountain slope, located north of the cabin, on what appeared to the be the fourth pass. As the airplane came by the cabin, witnesses saw the left wing and nose come up. The airplane then turned 180 degrees to the right, and descended to the ground in a nose-down attitude. The airplane collided with the ground in a near-vertical attitude. Members of the group cared for the pilot and passenger, and one member departed the cabin on-foot to notify law enforcement personnel. Rescue personnel responded and transported the passenger to a hospital. Examination of the airplane did not disclose any preimpact mechanical malfunction.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate airspeed while performing a low level pass, which resulted in an uncontrolled descent and collision with terrain. A factor contributing to the accident was an inadvertent stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC06FA080
- Event ID
- 20060705X00873
- Case number
- ANC06FA080
- 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 2006-06-28.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 716b30958a10384140f0ed33fe5877273ab670105a56bfd048bd7cc88217a648; retrieved 2026-09-20T17:14:58.247Z.