ANC21LA047 · Piper J3C-65
Piper J3C-65 · Accident
From Homer Airport (HOM) to Lake Hood Seaplane Base (LHD)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC21LA047
- 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 J3C-65
- Aircraft type
- Piper J3
- 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
- N98109
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Homer Airport (HOM), Homer, AKTo Lake Hood Seaplane Base (LHD), Anchorage, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 75 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, while en route, the engine lost partial power, and he was unable to restore full power. During the subsequent off-airport landing, the airplane nosed over and came to rest inverted, resulting in substantial damage to the empennage and right wing. A postaccident examination revealed no mechanical failures or malfunctions that would have precluded normal operation. According to the carburetor icing-probability chart located in the Federal Aviation Administration Special Airworthiness Information Bulletin CE-09-35, the accident flight would likely have been operating in conditions conducive to “serious icing in cruise power”; however, the pilot reported that he applied carburetor heat following the loss of power. The reason for the loss of power could not be determined based on the available information.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power 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 ANC21LA047
- Event ID
- 20210629103376
- Case number
- ANC21LA047
- 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, coordinates, 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: cd1bc85a0bac666fe21dd80044b3e34716bae7bf59eda29143d4f4862c4e8389; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:14:10.447Z.