ANC18FA050 · Piper PA 18-150
Piper PA 18-150 · Accident en route
From Salcha, AK to Fireweed Airport (0AK8)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC18FA050
- 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
- 2 · 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
- Unknown
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
- N8664Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Salcha, AKTo Fireweed Airport (0AK8), Mccarthy, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 48 years (built 1970)
- 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
- En route
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot was conducting a personal cross-country flight in a single-engine airplane with a passenger. After the airplane failed to arrive at the intended destination, an extensive search was launched; the airplane was located on a knoll consisting of trees and muskeg 3 days after it departed a private airstrip. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the wings and fuselage.
A review of archived weather information for the area about the estimated time of the accident revealed a ceiling between 5,000 ft and 6,000 ft above ground level with forward visibility between 6 and 10 statute miles.
Postaccident examination of the airplane and engine revealed no evidence of preimpact mechanical failures or malfunctions that would have precluded normal operation. Thus, based on the available evidence, the investigation could not determine the exact cause of the accident.
The emergency locator transmitter was found in the "OFF" position, which prevented the beacon from activating and producing an audible signal, and may have contributed to the length of the search.
Probable cause
Undetermined based on the available evidence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC18FA050
- Event ID
- 20180627X30002
- Case number
- ANC18FA050
- 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. 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: e98604651b3833768cc931ec9a35978e1f2b688e4c11d711e732bf0d705ef913; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:43:09.981Z.