ANC11CA013 · Piper PA-18
Piper PA-18 · Accident: nose over/nose down during landing
From Sterling Air Park (40AK) to Sterling Air Park (40AK)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC11CA013
- 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
- N623MP
- Operator
- Johnson Johnny L
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sterling Air Park (40AK), Sterling, AKTo Sterling Air Park (40AK), Sterling, 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
- Nose over/nose down
- 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 power plant
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, the accident flight was the first flight after a major rebuild of the airplane. After completing ground runs on the engine, he and a passenger departed for a test flight. During the initial climb, approximately 600 feet above the ground, the engine lost power. He elected to land in a snow-covered field and during the landing the airplane nosed over. Substantial damage was sustained to both the front and rear lift struts on the right wing. A postaccident inspection of the fuel system by the pilot revealed a flap of rubber inside a flexible fuel hose that was of significant size to restrict fuel flow to the engine. The fuel hose was fabricated by the airplane owner, under the supervision of the mechanic. The fuel hose which was fabricated out of flexible automotive hydraulic line was not an approved aircraft-grade fuel hose.
Probable cause
The airplane owner improper fabrication of a fuel line, and subsequent inadequate inspection by an aviation mechanic, resulting in a loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC11CA013
- Event ID
- 20110225X34010
- Case number
- ANC11CA013
- 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: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 73820fc86692067dbb5495800baab1e5c4a278de114f2c545400fef29362e00e; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:50:58.836Z.