ANC08CA019 · American Champion (ACAC) 8GCBC
American Champion (ACAC) 8GCBC · Accident
From Wasilla Airport (IYS) to Wolf Lake Airport (4AK6)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC08CA019
- 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
American Champion (ACAC) 8GCBC
- Aircraft type
- American Champion (acac) 8
- 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
- N439MA
- Operator
- Ryan J. Nelson · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wasilla Airport (IYS), Wasilla, AKTo Wolf Lake Airport (4AK6), Palmer, 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
- Not recorded
- 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
- Not recorded
- 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 › Touchdown, misjudged
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 was landing on a snow-covered runway during dusk. The pilot reported that after landing, the airplane's right wheel struck a snow berm on the right side of the runway, and the airplane nosed over. The airplane sustained structural damage to the left wing lift strut and empennage. The pilot noted that there were no preaccident mechanical anomalies with the airplane. He said that a postaccident examination revealed that the runway edge markers on the right side of the runway are situated 28 feet to the right of the runway centerline, and the runway edge markers on the left side of the runway are situated 16 feet to the left of the runway centerline.
Probable cause
The pilot's misjudged touchdown point during landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC08CA019
- Event ID
- 20080331X00401
- Case number
- ANC08CA019
- 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 2007-11-15.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ef0892cde0ccca69cb3e9ef54a2d6a0e2e767feb6aebdeadc035cdbb422b9416; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:16:31.008Z.