ANC08LA101 · Piper PA-18
Piper PA-18 · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Lake Hood Airport (Z41) to Tyonek, AK
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC08LA101
- 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-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
- N82057
- Operator
- John T. Hester · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lake Hood Airport (Z41), Anchorage, AKTo Tyonek, 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 · landing roll
- 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 on ground
- 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 › Action/decision
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 was landing a tundra-tire-equipped airplane on a sandy area that was about 900 feet long, and about 50 feet wide. As the pilot applied the brakes in an area of soft sand, the airplane nosed over. The airplane received structural damage to the fuselage, left wing, left wing strut, and the vertical stabilizer. The pilot noted that he could have landed "a little slower so as to not need any braking to get stopped before the soft sand, or land somewhere else."
Probable cause
The pilot's excessive speed and excessive application of brakes during the landing roll on soft, sandy terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC08LA101
- Event ID
- 20080812X01221
- Case number
- ANC08LA101
- 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 2008-08-07.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 4eb5d09975d3a275e7132dcfa297235af0cd1d072138d5bf5e4315f296d331e7; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:02:50.587Z.