ANC07LA018 · Piper PA-12
Piper PA-12 · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Gulkana Airport (PAGK) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC07LA018
- 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-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
- N3233M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Gulkana Airport (PAGK), Glennallen, 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
- 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 commercial certificated pilot was maneuvering to land his ski-equipped airplane on a snow-covered lake during a Title 14, CFR Part 91, personal flight. The pilot reported that he and his passenger were scouting the area for a wolf hunt, and decided to land on a remote frozen lake. While making a slight left turn toward the landing area, he said he encountered a windshear about 20 feet above the ground. He said the airplane was configured with 20 degrees of flaps, and the airspeed was about 45 mph. The pilot indicated the left wing stalled, and the airplane descended, colliding with the surface of the lake. The airplane received structural damage to the left wing, fuselage, and landing gear. The pilot described the wind conditions as light and variable winds, with no gusts. He also indicated that the wind shifted several times after the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate airspeed to preclude a stall while maneuvering, which resulted in an uncontrolled descent and subsequent collision with terrain. Factors contributing to the accident were variable wind conditions, and an inadvertent stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC07LA018
- Event ID
- 20070313X00287
- Case number
- ANC07LA018
- 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: 420b7623b408642248f74425820f99e7d73d847e83797e89318f0f2869cf446c; retrieved 2026-09-21T18:36:49.259Z.