ANC12CA090
2012-08-17 · Fairbanks, Alaska, United States · None · 1 aircraft · Status: Completed
Airport PAFA
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
FAA avdata. C = Cause, 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 ↗.
Search this event elsewhere
External sources are reported, not agency: signal that something happened, not fact about what happened.
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Related research
Matched on aircraft type or causal vocabulary (runway excursion). All research papers
- SKYbrary (Eurocontrol) 2024 · SKYbrary article Runway Excursion — SKYbrary Knowledge Base
SKYbrary runway excursion review — RE-OE (overruns) + RE-LO (lateral). Risk drivers: long landing, high approach speed, contaminated surface, tailwind, mis-set autobrakes.
- NTSB Aircraft Accident Reports 2019 · Accident report Embraer ERJ 175 Runway Excursion at Charlotte Douglas
Republic Airline ERJ-175 runway excursion CLT, January 2018. Examines a low-energy runway excursion involving misuse of autobrakes + thrust reverser response after a high-crosswind landing on a contam…
- NASA NTRS 2025 · Presentation Uncovering Resilient Behavior in the Aviation Safety Reporting System Using Large Language Models
Resiliency is present in everyday life, both in system design and exhibited by the operators that function within these systems.
- NASA NTRS 2025 · Conference Paper Uncovering Resilient Behavior in the Aviation Safety Reporting System Using Large Language Models
Resiliency is present in everyday life, both in system design and exhibited by the operators that function within these systems.
- Flight Safety Foundation 2024 · FSF / AeroSafety World Runway Safety Initiative Final Report (RSI)
Foundation Runway Safety Initiative final report — comprehensive analysis of runway excursion + incursion risk drivers worldwide.
- Semantic Scholar 2020 · Article Towards online prediction of safety-critical landing metrics in aviation using supervised machine learning
Abstract In recent years, due to the increased availability of data and improvements in computing power, application of machine learning techniques to various aviation safety problems for identifying,…