ANC12FA028 · Piper PA-18
Piper PA-18 · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin on approach
From Sleetmute Airport (PASL) to Red Devil, AK
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC12FA028
- 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
- 2 · 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
- N7276D
- Operator
- Richard I. Wilmarth · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sleetmute Airport (PASL), Sleetmute, AKTo Red Devil, 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Aerodynamic stall/spin
- 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
- Personnel issues › Experience/knowledge
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
About 30 minutes after the uncertificated pilot and a passenger departed for a reconnaissance flight, a witness saw the airplane flying "low and slow" over the treetops toward the intended landing site. As the airplane flew toward the landing site threshold, it began a slight right turn, then it nosed down abruptly, and the engine speed increased to a very high rpm setting. The airplane continued the near-vertical, steep descent, and it began a 3/4 spiral turn downward, indicative of an aerodynamic stall, before descending from view into the trees at the approach end of the site. An NTSB on scene wreckage examination of the airplane did not disclose any preimpact mechanical malfunctions. It is likely that the pilot failed to maintain adequate airspeed during the low-altitude approach, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall from which he could not recover even with the addition of engine power.
Probable cause
Operation of the airplane by a non-certificated pilot and his failure to maintain adequate airspeed and airplane control, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC12FA028
- Event ID
- 20120331X34152
- Case number
- ANC12FA028
- 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 2012-03-31.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 2c8a412f83a480a48c6b5305ca6e52fb1567bffce4bff27bc246d992cfc328b7; retrieved 2026-09-13T22:17:12.267Z.