ANC08FA079 · Piper PA-18
Piper PA-18 · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Wasilla, AK to Wasilla, AK
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC08FA079
- 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-18
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-18
- 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
- N2581P
- Operator
- Robert J. Gilmore · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wasilla, AKTo Wasilla, 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
- Landing
- 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 oper/perf/capability
- 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 private pilot and passenger were returning to the pilot's private airstrip after a local personal flight. A witness said that about 20 minutes after the airplane had departed, it returned overhead, circled the airstrip once, then began an approach for landing to the south, which required a correction for a left crosswind. As the airplane passed over the approach end of the airstrip, its approach became unstable and it drifted to the right, towards a stand of large trees that bordered the airstrip. Just before the airplane touched down, the engine power increased significantly, the nose pitched up, and it began a steep climb. The witness said that the airplane's right wing struck a 75-foot-tall tree, which pivoted the airplane to the right, and it descended nose first into dense woods. Witnesses stated that at the time of the accident, there were gusty winds between 25 and 30 knots, with rapid direction changes. Examination of the airplane did not disclose any preimpact mechanical malfunction.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain directional control while landing in a gusty crosswind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC08FA079
- Event ID
- 20080703X00978
- Case number
- ANC08FA079
- 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 2008-06-30.
- API snapshot SHA-256: daf035a79962897b3d6a30632b6173b33ee53e55ae63133435ae4f028e85e2d9; retrieved 2026-09-13T19:12:19.601Z.