GAA16CA516 · Piper PA 18 150
Piper PA 18 150 · Accident: landing area overshoot
From Walik River, AK to Ralph Wien Memorial Airport (OTZ)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA16CA516
- 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
- Instrument 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
- N2880P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Walik River, AKTo Ralph Wien Memorial Airport (OTZ), Kotzebue, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 61 years (built 1955)
- 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
- Landing
- 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
- Landing area overshoot
- 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 › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of the tundra tire-equipped, tailwheel airplane reported that he made an off-airport precautionary landing due to icing conditions; the airplane encountered soft terrain during the landing roll and nosed over.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to the left wing and empennage.
The pilot reported no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
A review of recorded data from the intended destination's automated weather observation station about 19 miles to the south west, revealed that, about 37 minutes before the accident the wind was 120 degrees true at 14 knots, visibility 1 statue mile, light snow, mist, temperature 34 degrees Fahrenheit, dewpoint 30 degrees Fahrenheit. And, about 23 minutes after the accident the wind was 110 degrees true at 13 knots, overcast 1,700 feet, visibility 1 ¼ statue mile, light snow, mist, temperature 34 degrees Fahrenheit, dewpoint 32 degrees Fahrenheit.
Probable cause
The pilot’s selection of unsuitable terrain for an off-airport precautionary landing, which resulted in a nose-over.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA16CA516
- Event ID
- 20160928X15757
- Case number
- GAA16CA516
- 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 2016-09-26.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 4297b890e40ccde906b628b09b3e09204e9cc189ea655872425941dc52cbea52; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:19:29.919Z.