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Atlas / NTSB / ANC12CA090

NTSB CAROL · Event

Event ANC12CA090

2012-08-17 Fairbanks, Alaska, United States Airport · PAFA None 1 aircraft Status: Completed

Aircraft involved

Probable cause & findings

The pilot's failure to maintain directional control during landing, which resulted in a ground loop and runway excursion.

Factual narrative

The private pilot stated that during the landing roll out, he looked down to turn off the carburetor heat. When he looked back up, he was on the left edge of the runway. He over corrected with right rudder, ground looped, and departed the right side of the runway onto the grass. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage. The pilot indicated that there were no preaccident mechanical anomalies with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. The private pilot stated that during the landing roll, he looked down to turn off the carburetor heat. When he looked back up, he was on the left edge of the runway. He overcorrected with right rudder, ground looped, and departed the right side of the runway onto the grass. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage. The pilot indicated that there were no preaccident mechanical anomalies with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. 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 Personnel issues-Task performance-Use of equip/info-Aircraft control-Pilot - C
  • C Aircraft-Aircraft oper/perf/capability-Performance/control parameters-Directional control-Not attained/maintained - C
  • Personnel issues-Psychological-Attention/monitoring-Attention-Pilot

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_2012_ANC12CA090.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 (runway excursion). 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 ↗