FTW98LA124 · Piper PA-22-108
Piper PA-22-108 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during landing
From Frederick Regional Airport (FDR) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98LA124
- 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-22-108
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-22
- 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
- N4654Z
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Frederick Regional Airport (FDR)To 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, normal brake system › Failure
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The 35-hour student pilot stated that he was aware that he was landing downwind, but feared that he might have lost visual contact with the airport due to the fog that was forming, if he had attempted to circle the airport to land on runway 3. The pilot reported the winds from 030 degrees at 15 knots and stated that he touched down midfield on the 4,800-foot runway. During the landing roll, he started to apply the wheel brakes as he approached the departure end of the runway. While applying brake pressure with the brake lever, the cable to the brakes snapped resulting in the total loss of braking action. The airplane overran the departure end of the runway, and the nose wheel impacted a ridge/terrace in the wheat field adjacent to the airport. The 1961 model 'Colt' had accumulated a total of 1,715 airframe hours. According to the manufacturer's illustrated parts catalog, the failed cable assembly for the brake control, part number 40123-91, is a condition item without a specific replacement or retirement time. The cable separated at the point where it makes a sharp turn over a pulley (part number 11200-00).
Probable cause
The loss of wheel brakes due to the failure of the brake actuating cable. A factor was the tailwind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98LA124
- Event ID
- 20001211X09544
- Case number
- FTW98LA124
- 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: 64a7c444193fa86e41ae3cee68cdc6d8e0fdb33ada113f65bbc5fef5cc870083; retrieved 2026-09-22T18:03:31.916Z.