ANC21FA028 · Piper PA-18A
Piper PA-18A · Accident: loss of engine power (total) on approach
From Willow Airport (UUO) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC21FA028
- 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
Piper PA-18A
- 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
- N1968P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Willow Airport (UUO), Willow, AKTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 64 years (built 1957)
- 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
- Approach
- 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 engine power (total)
- 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
Before landing, the pilot selected a different fuel tank, and during final approach, the engine lost total power. The pilot switched fuel tanks while maneuvering the airplane for a forced landing, during which the left wing impacted a light pole and the airplane spun to the left before impacting the ground in a nose-down attitude.
A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed no mechanical failures or malfunctions that would have precluded normal operation, and the reason for the loss of engine power could not be determined based on the available information.
The temperature and due point spread made it unlikely for carburetor icing conditions at the time of the accident.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined based on the available evidence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC21FA028
- Event ID
- 20210329102826
- Case number
- ANC21FA028
- 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, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2021-03-29.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 345bb3e5a21ad6508264a5471da56e0fae12b645fc8c5c9f0acd5c622707e1ac; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:53:24.385Z.