ANC21LA077 · Piper PA-12
Piper PA-12 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC21LA077
- 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-12
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-12
- 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
- N2579M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- 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
- Approach · VFR go-around
- 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 in flight
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of the tailwheel-equipped airplane reported that he was landing at a short, unimproved, off-airport landing site with a malfunctioning airspeed indicator. After touchdown, he immediately retracted the flaps when a strong gusting crosswind lifted the left wing, and the right main tire simultaneously impacted a large rock. The airplane bounced into the air, and he applied throttle to arrest the airplanes descent and touched down again. Realizing he was beyond the halfway point of the landing surface; he applied full throttle and initiated a go-around. The airplane failed to gain altitude, stalled, impacted the ground and nosed-over sustaining substantial damage to the left wing, vertical stabilizer and rudder.
A postaccident examination revealed no anomalies with the airspeed indicator instrument; however, a blockage was present in the pitot/static system.
The pilot stated that the accident may have been prevented if he had returned to his departure airstrip when he noticed the malfunctioning airspeed indicator rather than continuing and attempting to land at the short, unimproved, off-airport landing site.
Probable cause
The pilot’s loss of control on go-around in gusting crosswind conditions. Contributing to accident was the pilot’s decision to attempt to land at a short off-airport landing site with a malfunctioning airspeed indicator.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC21LA077
- Event ID
- 20210831103778
- Case number
- ANC21LA077
- 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, coordinates, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2021-08-28.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 292670ccbf903798f9e96f06c3f10036bbf56775cc4fd30d8c4c8e500d7aceb7; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:28:17.464Z.