ANC08LA003 · Maule M-5-220C
Maule M-5-220C · Accident: loss of engine power on approach
From Aniak Airport (PANI) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC08LA003
- 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
Maule M-5-220C
- Aircraft type
- Maule M-5
- 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
- N62029
- Operator
- Chad Smith
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Aniak Airport (PANI), Aniak, 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
- Approach · VFR pattern downwind
- 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
- Fuel starvation; Tree(s)
- 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
- Fluid, fuel › Starvation
- Pilot in command › Fuel tank selector position, 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 flew 10 miles east to another airport for night currency training. He said he was doing touch and go landings, and while flying on the downwind leg, the airplane's engine lost power. The pilot reported that he was unable to reach the runway, and that the airplane landed in trees. He said the airplane was fueled prior to the departure, and that he switched fuel tanks after the engine lost power. The pilot said the airplane sustained damage to the wings and fuselage when it collided with trees. He reported that a more thorough preflight of the fuel tanks, and to verify which tank the engine was operating on, may have prevented the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper fuel tank selection and fuel starvation, while doing touch-and-go landings.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC08LA003
- Event ID
- 20071012X01576
- Case number
- ANC08LA003
- 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 2007-10-08.
- API snapshot SHA-256: d89e54f181a1c0fd96b07b7251ca54b875347624882c2e48d13f04cf643bc34d; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:21:37.858Z.