ANC08CA117 · Bellanca 8GCBC
Bellanca 8GCBC · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Metro Field (MTF) to Metro Field (MTF)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC08CA117
- 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
Bellanca 8GCBC
- Aircraft type
- Bellanca 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
- N2981M
- Operator
- Dave Whitmer
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Metro Field (MTF), Fairbanks, AKTo Metro Field (MTF), Fairbanks, 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 › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot was landing on Runway 06, a 4,600 foot-long, by 80 feet wide gravel and partially paved runway. In the student pilot's written statement to the NTSB, he reported that he elected to land on the gravel-covered part of the runway, which was on the left side of the runway. During touchdown, the airplane bounced, and he attempted to recover, but the airplane drifted to the left, and the left wing struck tall brush. The airplane pivoted to the left, and the right wing struck the ground, sustaining substantial damage to the right wing, right aileron, and fuselage. The student pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical anomalies with the airplane. At the time of the accident the closest weather observation facility, about 2 miles west of the accident site, was reporting winds as 110 degrees at 6 knots.
Probable cause
The student pilot's inadequate recovery from a bounced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC08CA117
- Event ID
- 20081003X62325
- Case number
- ANC08CA117
- 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. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2008-09-01.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 4b5f7c2ccdeb5b2d17aceb469c1193a37266c399b13ee4c920ab6f6f4f79ae8b; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:21:34.296Z.