ANC13CA044 · Piper PA-18-150
Piper PA-18-150 · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route
From Rainbow Heights Estates Airstrip (6AK7) to Rainbow Heights Estates Airstrip (6AK7)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC13CA044
- 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-18-150
- 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
- N8899Y
- Operator
- Westcott Brett M
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rainbow Heights Estates Airstrip (6AK7), Wasilla, AKTo Rainbow Heights Estates Airstrip (6AK7), Wasilla, 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 · cruise
- 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 engine power (partial)
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that while in level cruise flight, the engine began to run rough and lost power. Unable to restore full engine power, the pilot selected an area of snow-covered terrain as a forced landing site. During the landing, as the main wheels contacted deep snow, the airplane nosed over, sustaining substantial damage to the right wing lift strut.
The pilot reported that he applied carburetor heat after the initial loss of engine power and that the engine was only able to maintain 1,100 rpm. About the time of the accident, a weather observation station located about 25 miles northwest of the accident site reported the temperature at 45 degrees F and dew point at 41 degrees F. According to a carburetor icing probability chart, the airplane was susceptible to icing at both cruise and climb power. The pilot did not report and a postaccident examination of the wreckage did not reveal any evidence of a mechanical malfunction. It is likely that the loss of engine power was due to carburetor icing.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to use continuous carburetor heat while operating in conditions conducive to carburetor icing, which resulted in the development of carburetor ice and a subsequent partial loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC13CA044
- Event ID
- 20130514X30917
- Case number
- ANC13CA044
- 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: 4c58346ceffb7e14972fcc32965aa9275da60517dd2a1bb33de9a8ca8a09a084; retrieved 2026-09-15T21:33:06.662Z.