ANC14LA058 · de Havilland DHC 2
Glenn Air de Havilland DHC 2 · Accident: runway excursion during takeoff
From Talkeetna, AK to Wasilla Airport (IYS)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC14LA058
- 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
de Havilland DHC 2
- Aircraft type
- de Havilland DHC-2
- 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
- N62197
- Operator
- Glenn Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Talkeetna, AKTo Wasilla Airport (IYS), Wasilla, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 57 years (built 1957)
- 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
- Runway excursion
- 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 airplane had been outfitted with a large, bulk fuel tank to transport fuel to remote sites. After a fuel delivery, the airplane departed from a soft, wet, and muddy sod-covered airstrip that was 1,400 ft long and 50 ft wide with a slight downhill grade. The pilot reported that, during the takeoff run, the airplane failed to become airborne before reaching the end of the airstrip, so he aborted the takeoff. The airplane overran the airstrip and sustained substantial damage to the wings and fuselage.
The operator stated that, before the fuel delivery, the airplane was loaded with about 180 gallons of aviation fuel and that, after arriving at the airstrip, the pilot got out of the airplane, connected a hose and transfer pump system to the bulk fuel tank, and operated the transfer pump for about 5 minutes. Postaccident examination of the wreckage revealed that all 180 gallons of fuel were still in the bulk fuel tank. According to the operator, the pilot did not open the drain valve to allow the tank to drain nor did he verify that the tank was empty before departing. Further, the operator stated that the pilot departed about midfield using only the last 750 ft of airstrip that remained; the estimated takeoff distance for the flight was between 800 and 900 ft.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inadequate preflight inspection that did not detect that the bulk fuel tank was full and led to an unanticipated heavy airplane weight and his failure to use the entire soft, wet, and muddy airstrip length for takeoff, which resulted in a takeoff overrun.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC14LA058
- Event ID
- 20140804X93443
- Case number
- ANC14LA058
- 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 2014-07-31.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 407adb1f3aff18808acc5fc6e52227bf72bd17ab7f1df797e6049d154f5a1ca4; retrieved 2026-09-16T01:36:06.645Z.