ANC19LA006 · Cessna 172
Cessna 172 · Accident: fuel contamination during initial climb
From Merrill Field (MRI) to Merrill Field (MRI)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC19LA006
- 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
Cessna 172
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N2809L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Merrill Field (MRI), Anchorage, AKTo Merrill Field (MRI), Anchorage, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 51 years (built 1967)
- 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
- Fuel contamination
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the private pilot, shortly after departing for the local, personal flight and about 300 ft above ground level, the engine began losing power and running extremely roughly. He declared an emergency and was able to return to the departure airport for landing. During landing, the left wing impacted the runway, which resulted in substantial damage to the outboard portion of the left wing.
Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed large amounts of ice around the fuel caps and on the fuel cap vent, and a large amount of debris and water was drained from the carburetor bowl. Due to the amount of water found in the carburetor, it is likely that water entered the fuel system through the fuel caps and led to the partial loss of engine power.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain airplane control during the landing flare, which resulted in the wing striking the runway. Contributing to the accident was a partial loss of engine power, which resulted from fuel contamination.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC19LA006
- Event ID
- 20181105X12446
- Case number
- ANC19LA006
- 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: 0aece6dd96b81ff9b237e985024b82e4d9a2db21203141392c76cf805ce92a23; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:24:52.867Z.