ANC17LA016 · Piper PA18 125
Piper PA18 125 · Accident while maneuvering
From Sterling, AK to Sterling, AK
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC17LA016
- 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 PA18 125
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA18
- 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
- N1268A
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sterling, AKTo Sterling, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 66 years (built 1951)
- 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
- Maneuvering · low-altitude flying
- 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
- Unknown or undetermined
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
- 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 reported that, while making a right turn during a personal flight, the flight controls "stuck." She was unable to make aileron or elevator control inputs, and was also unable to correct the airplane's bank using rudder inputs. The airplane subsequently descended in a right turn until it impacted the ground.
The airplane was removed from the accident site before it could be examined. During recovery, both wings and their control cables were cut. The airplane was later examined on the pilot's property, strapped to a trailer. Examination of the airframe and engine revealed no evidence of any control anomalies that would have precluded normal operation; however, since the flight control system was compromised during the recovery, the pre-accident condition of the flight controls could not be determined and the investigation was unable to establish a reason for the pilot's reported loss of control.
Probable cause
The pilot’s loss of control while maneuvering for reasons that could not be determined based on the available information.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC17LA016
- Event ID
- 20170209X35302
- Case number
- ANC17LA016
- 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 2017-02-09.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 5cf04d087034fa10086d2c15f1f622dba01fcdf2587a810471ac61a036471bf9; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:00:21.533Z.