ANC10CA072 · Piper J5C
Piper J5C · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Birchwood Airport (BCV) to Skwentna, AK
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC10CA072
- 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 J5C
- Aircraft type
- Piper J5
- 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
- N38532
- Operator
- Woodward Paul A
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Birchwood Airport (BCV), Birchwood, AKTo Skwentna, 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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
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 on a personal cross-country flight with a landing at an off airport site, under Title 14, CFR Part 91. According to the pilot, during landing at the off airport site, the airplane bounced through a rough spot that he had not identified during his overflight prior to landing. He said the airplane bounced in a tail-high attitude, and he did not apply power quickly enough to prevent the airplane from nosing over. The pilot reported that he should have spent more time evaluating the site for seasonal changes prior to landing. He said there were no mechanical problems with the airplane prior to the accident, and that the airplane sustained substantial damage to the wings and rudder.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain directional control during landing, and his selection of unsuitable terrain for landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC10CA072
- Event ID
- 20100824X34903
- Case number
- ANC10CA072
- 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 2010-08-09.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ffd72ef3ab56c0a5cd4aeb824b8b5df4c780303dd9d0aa5dd0697e6e302c7871; retrieved 2026-09-15T14:56:32.921Z.