FLIGHT FINDINGSAVIATION OCCURRENCE MAP
Back to map

ANC12CA115 · Cessna 182A

30 Sept 2012 · Port Lions, AK, United States

Cessna 182A · Accident: structural icing during takeoff

From Port Lions, AK (private airstrip) to Kodiak /Lilly Lake/ Seaplane Base (9Z3)

Report a problem

Event

NTSB case
ANC12CA115
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 182A

Aircraft type
Cessna 182
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
N2028G
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Port Lions, AK (private airstrip)To Kodiak /Lilly Lake/ Seaplane Base (9Z3), Kodiak, 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
Takeoff
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
Structural icing
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
  • Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
  • Personnel issues › Action/decision

Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

Prior to departure, the commercial pilot attempted to remove ice and snow contamination from the wings of the float-equipped airplane, but some contamination remained. During the takeoff run, the airplane failed to become airborne before reaching the end of the lake. The airplane slid along a gravel spillway for several hundred feet before nosing over. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the wings, empennage, and fuselage. The pilot stated that there were no preaccident anomalies with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. The pilot noted that the accident might have been avoided if he had removed all the frozen contamination from the wing or waited for above-freezing temperatures.

Probable cause

The pilot's decision to take off with ice- and snow-contaminated wings.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record ANC12CA115
Event ID
20121001X80238
Case number
ANC12CA115
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 2012-10-01.
  • API snapshot SHA-256: ae6382af342c14116c9bb6c27da58dc3f94b04c261b9dcab06859a857f583403; retrieved 2026-09-15T20:04:02.573Z.