ANC15LA056 · Piper PA 18-150
Piper PA 18-150 · Accident: loss of lift during initial climb
From Shannons Pond Seaplane Base (0Z3) to Dillingham, AK
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC15LA056
- 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
- N8761C
- Operator
- Flensburg Susan L
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Shannons Pond Seaplane Base (0Z3), Dillingham, AKTo Dillingham, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 62 years (built 1953)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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 lift
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- 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 private pilot was conducting a personal flight in the float-equipped airplane. The pilot reported that, after reaching the planned takeoff decision point, the airplane was not airborne, so he applied full flaps, and the airplane then immediately became airborne. The airplane climbed to about 40 ft above ground level, but it had insufficient airspeed to continue climbing and subsequently stalled. In an attempt to avoid impacting the trees ahead, the pilot initiated a left bank, and the airplane subsequently impacted a flat area of muskeg adjacent to the waterway. A postaccident engine examination revealed no mechanical anomalies or malfunctions that would have precluded normal operation. The pilot should not have continued the takeoff given that the airplane had not become airborne by the planned decision takeoff point.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to attain adequate airspeed during initial climb after takeoff, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's improper decision to continue a takeoff even though the airplane was not airborne by the planned takeoff decision point.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC15LA056
- Event ID
- 20150727X42358
- Case number
- ANC15LA056
- 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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2015-07-21.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 66f5ade219b80030ee8ca59b1467e1e7fe23a6a4a7211b12f4c84342d272183d; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:34:59.262Z.