ANC14CA061 · Aviat Aircraft Inc A 1 UNDESIGNAT
Wild Bills Aviation Aviat Aircraft Inc A 1 UNDESIGNAT · Accident: loss of control on ground during takeoff
From Ketchikan, AK to Ketchikan, AK
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC14CA061
- 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
Aviat Aircraft Inc A 1 UNDESIGNAT
- Aircraft type
- Aviat A-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
- N400HU
- Operator
- Wild Bills Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ketchikan, AKTo Ketchikan, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 17 years (built 1997)
- 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 · rejected 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
- Loss of control on ground
- 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 › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was departing from a remote mountain lake in an amphibious float-equipped airplane. Prior to departure he observed the wind out of the east, and began his takeoff run in an easterly direction. He stated that the airplane was slow to accelerate and unstable once on the step. He closed the throttle and aborted the takeoff, the airplane immediately yawed to the right, he applied left rudder and deployed the water rudders in an effort to correct for the yaw, but the right wing impacted a tree and swung the airplane into the shoreline. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the right wing and right lift strut. The pilot stated that there were no preaccident mechanical anomalies with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
While awaiting rescue, the pilot noted that the wind reversed direction about the center of the lake, and he may have encountered a tailwind during the takeoff run.
In the recommendation section of the NTSB Accident/Incident Reporting Form 6120.1, the pilot stated that the accident may have been avoided if he had made the decision to abort the takeoff sooner.
Probable cause
The pilot's decision to takeoff from a remote mountain lake in variable wind. Contributing to the accident was the pilots delayed decision to abort the takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC14CA061
- Event ID
- 20140807X52333
- Case number
- ANC14CA061
- 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: 73b4484f1e4808c66072a84e7f7d2eb314965c926a4714ce76dfe2c72b837898; retrieved 2026-09-16T01:36:51.289Z.