ANC24LA061 · Piper PA-18-150
Piper PA-18-150 · Accident: nose over/nose down during landing
From Koliganek Airport (PAJZ) to Dillingham Airport (PADL)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC24LA061
- 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
- N243AK
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Koliganek Airport (PAJZ), Koliganek, AKTo Dillingham Airport (PADL), Dillingham, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 35 years (built 1989)
- 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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
- 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 reported that he was practicing off-airport takeoffs and landings in a tailwheel-equipped airplane. The pilot selected a landing site located on a ridgeline and assessed the ridge and wind conditions prior to attempting to land. On his first landing attempt he landed long and aborted the landing to set up for another attempt. On the second landing, the pilot landed long again, but did not initially attempt a go around. During the landing roll, the airplane bounced about 15 ft in the air, and then the pilot applied full power to abort the landing; however, the airplane was too slow, and the pilot lost directional control. The airplane subsequently struck the ground in a nose low, left wing low attitude, resulting in a nose over. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the left wing, fuselage and empennage. The pilot reported no pre-impact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper landing flare and an improper recovery from a bounced landing, resulting in a loss of directional control, and a subsequent nose over.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC24LA061
- Event ID
- 20240709194659
- Case number
- ANC24LA061
- 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 2024-07-09.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 061d435351574531ae6b6c326377fabf6d0389b75806532be2be6411d7192e86; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:01:41.899Z.