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ANC08CA043 · Stinson 108

13 Mar 2008 · Chugiak, AK, United States

Stinson 108 · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb

From Birchwood Airport (PABV) to an unrecorded destination

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Event

NTSB case
ANC08CA043
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

Stinson 108

Aircraft type
Stinson 108
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
N6827M
Operator
Littleton C. Billingsley · private individual
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Birchwood Airport (PABV), Chugiak, 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
Initial climb
Defining eventThe 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
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

  • Aircraft › Aircraft systems
  • Personnel issues › Task performance

Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

The airline transport certificated pilot was departing on a Title 14, CFR Part 91, local area flight. It was the first flight after an extensive rebuild, and annual inspection of the airplane. The pilot said he conducted a preflight inspection of the airplane using its checklist, and had several maintenance items corrected before takeoff. He said that as the airplane became airborne, it immediately rolled to the left, and the left wing struck the runway. He pulled the engine power to idle, but was unable to correct the roll. The airplane pivoted to the left and nosed over. A postaccident inspection of the airplane by the pilot, maintenance personnel, and an FAA inspector, revealed that the aileron control cables were misrouted, and the aileron's direction of travel was reversed.

Probable cause

The reversal of the aileron control cables by maintenance personnel, and the pilot's inadequate preflight inspection.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record ANC08CA043
Event ID
20080327X00391
Case number
ANC08CA043
Dataset
full-current
Source SHA-256
5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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 2008-03-14.
  • API snapshot SHA-256: 74cc1e45ea4cc7e1154030db7606c0494f4697d4ebaee0f4617766219bc67356; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:28:10.455Z.