CEN22LA417 · Piper PA-18-105 SPECIAL
Piper PA-18-105 SPECIAL · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) during initial climb
From Black Rapids Airport (5BK) to Fairbanks International Airport (PAFA)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN22LA417
- 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
- Government
- 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-18-105 SPECIAL
- 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
- N303T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Black Rapids Airport (5BK), Black Rapids, AKTo Fairbanks International Airport (PAFA), Fairbanks, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 69 years (built 1953)
- 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
- Public Aircraft
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT)
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot planned to depart from a 2,250 ft turf/gravel runway with expected wind conditions of 5 to 10 knots. After he arrived to the airplane, the pilot observed high wind conditions, with gusts to 40 knots. The pilot elected to depart and as the airplane passed over trees during the initial climb, he noticed high, gusty wind conditions, which he made full control inputs to counter. The airplane entered into sink and it subsequently impacted terrain, which resulted in substantial damage to the right wing and right horizontal stabilizer. The pilot reported that there were no mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation, and that he should have delayed the departure based on the high wind conditions.
Probable cause
The pilot’s decision to depart during high, gusty wind conditions which resulted sink and subsequent impact with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN22LA417
- Event ID
- 20220913105918
- Case number
- CEN22LA417
- 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: 4d9c721233a972c828da2103e6468280934412fb07d62f04ce64e747fde802e7; retrieved 2026-09-16T15:59:27.567Z.