ANC18FA071 · Piper PA-12-150
Piper PA-12-150 · Accident
From Fairbanks International Airport (FAI) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC18FA071
- 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-12-150
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-12
- 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
- N7511H
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fairbanks International Airport (FAI), Fairbanks, AKTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 72 years (built 1946)
- 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
- Unknown
- 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 pilot was performing a personal flight with one passenger to hunt sheep in remote mountainous terrain. After the pilot failed to report to his place of employment 4 days after their departure, an extensive SAR operation was launched the following day. The wreckage was located 2 days after the SAR operation began in a remote snow-covered mountainous valley. The airplane came to rest upright, with the fuselage banking to the right, both wings indicating forward/aft crushing, and the tail slightly elevated with little impact damage. The date and time of the accident could not be determined. Thus, the meteorological conditions before and at the time of the accident could not be determined.
A postaccident examination of the airframe and engine revealed no pre-impact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. The aft right wing spar exhibited signs of compression bending, with the right forward spar exhibiting aft bending. The aft left wing spar bolt indicated a failure in tension, and the left forward spar indicated forward bending. A postcrash fire incinerated a large portion of the wreckage.
The pilot did not file a flight plan. If the pilot had filed a flight plan, SAR assets would have focused on a specific search area which would likely have reduced the time to find the airplane. Although the accident was likely not survivable due to the impact forces, a filed flight plan would have reduced the risk to aerial SAR assets operating in remote mountainous terrain.
Probable cause
An impact with terrain 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 ANC18FA071
- Event ID
- 20180924X42217
- Case number
- ANC18FA071
- 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 2018-09-23.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 9f505e4587f5dcf8375ee3d7f7d435875b227edd864482d11a049869f7f42180; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:48:19.011Z.