SEA95LA229 · Piper PA-18A
Piper PA-18A · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during landing
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA95LA229
- 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
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- 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-18A
- 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
- N1953P
- Operator
- Linden J. Butikofer · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- First occurrenceThe 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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
- Landing gear, wheel › Loose part/bolt/nut/clamp/etc
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, inspection, inadequate
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, rebuild/remanufacture, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that while landing on his private airstrip the left main wheel separated from the aircraft and the aircraft nosed over. According to a county sheriff report, the left main wheel retaining nut and cotter pin were missing from the axle, and there was no cotter pin securing the right main wheel retaining nut. The airplane had undergone a major rebuild and annual inspection about 5 months (12 flight hours) before the accident. The pilot stated that he performed a preflight inspection on the day of the accident but did not check the cotter pins, which are visible if installed. A statement in the sheriff report indicated that shortly before landing, the adult passenger in the rear seat unfastened his seat belt because two children in his lap were interfering with control stick travel.
Probable cause
an improperly performed major rebuild and inadequate inspection of the aircraft by maintenance personnel. Inadequate preflight inspection by the pilot contributed to the accident.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA95LA229
- Event ID
- 20001207X04616
- Case number
- SEA95LA229
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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. 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: 45b8c035eee63aa672b3dbaf5a34bfb51181bc1f761ffe7c6a599f080841e627; retrieved 2026-09-21T22:03:22.665Z.