ANC13FA004 · Grumman Aircraft ENG Corp C-1A
Fuel Services Grumman Aircraft ENG Corp C-1A · Accident en route
From Wasilla Airport (PAWS) to Nixon Fork Mine Airport (AK40)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC13FA004
- 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
- 1 · 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
Grumman Aircraft ENG Corp C-1A
- Aircraft type
- Grumman Aircraft Eng C-1
- 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
- N27PH
- Operator
- Fuel Services
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wasilla Airport (PAWS), Wasilla, AKTo Nixon Fork Mine Airport (AK40), Nixon Fork Mine, 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
- En route
- 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
- Unknown or undetermined
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Not determined › Not determined
- 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 airline transport-rated pilot was on the first leg of a flight to deliver fuel to a remote mining site. About 30 minutes after departure, a primary radar track, thought to be that of the accident airplane, showed the airplane make a 180-degree turn back toward the point of departure. Two witnesses described hearing the airplane pass overhead, and both said that "the airplane did not sound right." One witness stated that the airplane flew directly overhead of his location under a low ceiling and was going very slow.
The airplane was severely damaged by a postimpact fire and explosion. A review of on-scene photographs by an NTSB fire and explosives investigator determined that there was no evidence of an in-flight fire.
Analysis of weather in the area around the time of the accident showed that although the ceiling was low, the weather did not play a significant role in the accident.
An NTSB on-scene examination of the airframe revealed no preaccident mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. However, due to the disposition of the wreckage, a detailed examination of the engines could not be accomplished on-scene. The wreckage was not recovered from the accident site. The circumstances leading up to the accident could not be determined.
Probable cause
The pilot’s loss of control of the airplane for reasons that could not be determined because the wreckage was not recovered from the accident site.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC13FA004
- Event ID
- 20121016X75112
- Case number
- ANC13FA004
- 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, coordinates. 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: c915b3db42deb5866b530b1473497bbe2f52cf5a6649116d347f4a1899748146; retrieved 2026-09-14T15:46:17.488Z.