ANC22LA080 · Cessna 180A
Cessna 180A · Accident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) during takeoff
From an unrecorded airport to Lake Hood Seaplane Base (LHD)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC22LA080
- 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
- API-reported fatalities
- 1 · all aircraft and ground
- 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 180A
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 180
- 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
- N9728B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Lake Hood Seaplane Base (LHD), Anchorage, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 65 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- System/component malfunction/failure (non-power)
- 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 systems
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 was departing on a cross-country flight in a float-equipped airplane when the accident occurred. She had contacted a family member and stated she was departing; however, she did not arrive at the destination when expected. A search was initiated, and the airplane was located partially submerged in the departure lake. Postaccident examination of the wreckage revealed that both floats were heavily corroded and separated from the fuselage. There was no evidence that either float had contacted a foreign object in the water. A portion of the hull on the right float tore open and bent back. It is likely that tear in the float resulted in the airplane impacting the water during the takeoff. Maintenance records were not available for review during the investigation. Though toxicology testing of the pilot’s tissue detected diazepam and venlafaxine and their metabolites in the pilot’s system, it is unlikely that the effects of these medications contributed to this accident.
Probable cause
The failure of the landing gear float due to inadequate maintenance of the floats and corrosion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC22LA080
- Event ID
- 20220926105993
- Case number
- ANC22LA080
- 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: 384ade8929fa7afc26367b8f598fe730fee49e30367378ee4e10025ad08c1f73; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:51:45.945Z.