Skip to content

Atlas / NTSB / ANC11CA036

NTSB CAROL · Event

Event ANC11CA036

2011-05-26 Palmer, Alaska, United States Airport · PAAQ None 1 aircraft Status: Completed

Aircraft involved

Probable cause & findings

The pilot's inadequate compensation for wind conditions.

Factual narrative

The solo student pilot initiated a go-around on his first landing attempt due to low level turbulence associated with wind coming over nearby trees. He elected to land beyond the trees on his next attempt, but about 5 feet above the runway, the airplane turned sharply to the right, and dropped to the ground. He said there were no mechanical anomalies with the airplane, and that he should have selected another airport where the wind was not a factor. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the wings and fuselage. The solo student pilot initiated a go-around on his first landing attempt due to low level turbulence associated with wind coming over nearby trees. He elected to land beyond the trees on his next attempt, but about 5 feet above the runway, the airplane turned sharply to the right, descended and impacted the ground. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the wings and fuselage. The pilot said there were no mechanical anomalies with the airplane, and that he should have selected another airport where the wind was not a factor. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database Retrieved: 2026-02-12

NTSB Findings

Hierarchical cause / factor breakdown from the FAA bulk avdata database. Each finding tagged C (Cause) or F (Factor).

  • C Aircraft-Aircraft oper/perf/capability-Performance/control parameters-Directional control-Not attained/maintained - C
  • C Personnel issues-Task performance-Use of equip/info-Aircraft control-Pilot - C
  • Environmental issues-Conditions/weather/phenomena-Turbulence-(general)-Contributed to outcome

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_2011_ANC11CA036.txt. Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb. Full investigation docket on data.ntsb.gov ↗.

Related research

What the literature says.

Academic papers and agency reports matching this event's aircraft type or causal vocabulary (go-around, turbulence). Sourced from NASA NTRS, NTSB Safety Studies, FAA CAMI, AOPA Air Safety Institute, Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons, arXiv, and the Semantic Scholar academic graph.

Browse the full corpus — academia portal ↗