Sluice Box Piper PA 18 accident
Piper PA 18 · Accident: turbulence encounter during takeoff
From Cantwell, AK to Cantwell, AK
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC14CA047
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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
- N72842
- Operator
- Sluice Box
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cantwell, AKTo Cantwell, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 64 years (built 1950)
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- Turbulence encounter
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was taking off from a gravel bar in a tailwheel-equipped airplane with a load of light, bulky cargo items. The gravel bar was in a valley location surrounded by mountainous terrain. He said that the wind indicators along the strip favored the takeoff direction, which was the same direction he had used for landing earlier. He stated that all felt normal during the takeoff roll, but the airplane encountered "a gust from behind or above" upon rotation. The airplane subsequently settled back to the surface and struck brush near the end of strip, turned, and came to a stop across a small ditch. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the right wing and the aft section of the fuselage. The pilot stated that there were no preaccident mechanical anomalies with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. The pilot reported that, right after the accident, he observed that the wind became very gusty to about 20 mph. He noted that the wind condition returned to light and variable in less than an hour.
Probable cause
The pilot's encounter with a wind gust during takeoff from a short gravel bar, which resulted in the airplane settling after rotation and striking obstacles.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC14CA047
- Event ID
- 20140627X00304
- Case number
- ANC14CA047
- 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: aae7b596eca1f2e23d2f1247c5fbcb2f6804336a25f36ef844671945a5c4bb7b; retrieved 2026-09-16T00:29:46.424Z.