ANC21LA010 · Cessna 172R
Elmendorf Air Force Base Aero Club Cessna 172R · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Quartz Creek Airport (JLA) to Elmendorf Air Force Base (PAED)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC21LA010
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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 172R
- 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
- N949AF
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Quartz Creek Airport (JLA), Cooper Landing, AKTo Elmendorf Air Force Base (PAED), Anchorage, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 22 years (built 1998)
- 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
- Landing
- 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
- Loss of control on ground
- 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 › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During an instructional flight, prior to landing, the pilots over flew the runway at pattern altitude to assess the runway conditions. The runway was observed snow-covered and appeared to have “recent tire track marks down the center of the runway”. The pilots chose to attempt a landing; however, during the touchdown, on the snow-covered runway, the main landing gear dug into the snow and the airplane decelerated rapidly. Subsequently, the nose-wheel entered the snow, “pivoting the airplane onto the nose”, and both wingtips struck the ground.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to both wings and the empennage.
The pilot reported no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
The airport supplement remarks state: “Unattended. Be alert rwy condition not monitored. Recommend visual inspection prior to landing.”
The flight instructor added that this accident could have been prevented by calling the airport and inquiring about the condition of the runway before the flight.
Probable cause
The pilot’s selection of unsuitable terrain for landing. A factor was the certified flight instructor’s selection of unsuitable terrain for landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC21LA010
- Event ID
- 20210105102493
- Case number
- ANC21LA010
- 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, cause areas. 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: 164d5eaa19fe750f83661a7b424fb5c48ba93e32e6df605329cd2feba14fdff9; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:32:37.761Z.