ANC22LA081 · Piper PA-18-150
Tradewind Piper PA-18-150 · Accident: nose over/nose down while taxiing
From Chignik Lagoon Airport (KCL) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC22LA081
- 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-18-150
- 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
- N4144E
- Operator
- Tradewind
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chignik Lagoon Airport (KCL), Chignik Lagoon, AKTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 44 years (built 1978)
- 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
- Taxi · from runway
- 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
- Nose over/nose down
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- 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
According to the pilot, after he landed, he taxied the airplane to the top of the hill to pick up a load he was going to transport and then past it to turn the airplane around. He turned the airplane slowly to maintain control, and then taxied down the hill back to the load and noted the wind was now a tailwind. The pilot applied the brakes to stop the airplane, but the wind lifted the tail, and the airplane nosed over, resulting in substantial damage to the rudder and wings. The pilot reported no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain airplane control during taxi in gusty conditions, which resulted in a nose-over and substantial damage to the rudder and wings.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC22LA081
- Event ID
- 20220926106000
- Case number
- ANC22LA081
- 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: 1d0eae41ee7d4207d004caf035760c8d403db80b1c7f518ccaab801f4b66cd4f; retrieved 2026-09-16T16:06:17.166Z.