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ANC09LA034 · Cessna 152

16 Apr 2009 · Talkeetna, AK, United States

Cessna 152 · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering

From Eagle river, AK to Eagle river, AK

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Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.

Event

NTSB case
ANC09LA034
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

Cessna 152

Aircraft type
Cessna 152
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
N46326
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route Narrative disagrees
From Eagle river, AKTo Eagle river, 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
Maneuvering · low-altitude flying
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 said that he was on a personal local flight when he made a low pass about 100 feet over a camp on a glacier, at about 7,200 feet elevation. He made the pass with full flaps, with approximately 65 knots of airspeed. When he retracted the flaps, he said that the airplane descended uncontrolled into the snow, despite the full application of power. The pilot indicated that there were no known mechanical problems with the airplane prior to the accident. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the wings and fuselage during impact.

Probable cause

The pilot's failure to maintain adequate airspeed to avoid an aerodynamic stall while maneuvering at a high density altitude.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record ANC09LA034
Event ID
20090417X25758
Case number
ANC09LA034
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 2009-04-17.
  • API snapshot SHA-256: b5255cfaa5be70a30e1f0a78a8d457609b7ff42c92677932d098f015efe01370; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:57:01.614Z.