ANC20LA002 · Cessna 172 Undesignat
Cessna 172 Undesignat · Accident: fuel related en route
From Wolf Lake Airport (4AK6) to Birchwood Airport (BCV)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC20LA002
- 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 Undesignat
- 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
- N7267A
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wolf Lake Airport (4AK6), Palmer, AKTo Birchwood Airport (BCV), Birchwood, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 63 years (built 1956)
- 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
- Fuel related
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, about 15 minutes after departure, the engine began to run rough and experienced a partial loss of power. He provided conflicting statements about the phase of flight when this occurred; he was either in cruise flight or was flying at a reduced power setting during a low approach to a remote site. After completing emergency engine procedures, which included applying carburetor heat, the pilot was unable to restore engine power and selected an all-terrain vehicle trail as a forced landing site. Just before touchdown, when the airplane was about 15 ft above the ground, the left wing struck a tree, and the airplane yawed left and touched down in a nose-low, off-center angle. The airplane sustained substantial damage to both wings and the fuselage. Postaccident examination of the engine, including a test run, revealed no evidence of any preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. Weather conditions about 15 nautical miles from the accident site were conducive for carburetor icing at cruise power and serious icing at glide power. The pilot only reported applying carburetor heat to restore engine power. Therefore, it is likely that carburetor ice accumulated before he applied the heat, which resulted in a partial loss of engine power. Further, the delayed application of carburetor heat was insufficient to melt the ice and restore power.
Probable cause
The pilot's delayed application of carburetor heat in weather conditions conducive to carburetor icing, which resulted in a partial loss of engine power, a precautionary landing, and impact with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC20LA002
- Event ID
- 20191016X21654
- Case number
- ANC20LA002
- 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: 3d61c59ab17040c0e2ba76fd2baad1e80f594331bda2c5632f7feb7328328a64; retrieved 2026-09-16T10:23:49.654Z.