FTW98LA370 · Piper PA-28-180
Piper PA-28-180 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Mesquite Airport (67L) to 1L8
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98LA370
- 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-28-180
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N4760L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mesquite Airport (67L), Mesquite, NVTo 1L8
- 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
- Loss of control on ground/water
- 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
- Pilot in command › Directional control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Porpoise/pilot-induced oscillation, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
As the pilot took off from Mesquite, Nevada, he heard 'a loud popping sound' and the airplane 'shook a brief moment.' He thought he had struck an animal or other object. He flew over the runway but saw nothing. He landed at Hurricane, Utah, at 80 knots (92 mph), and used 'slight cross control to compensate for the crosswind,' applied 'light' brake pressure, and raised the flaps. The airplane started to veer to the right. The pilot said he corrected with opposite rudder, but it had no effect. When he applied full left rudder and brakes, the airplane 'began to hop and acted as if it was going over on the left wing.' The airplane departed the right side of the runway and collided with a ditch. Photographs taken at the accident site showed the nose wheel bent and collapsed to the right. There was a dark scuffing mark angling off the runway at a 15 degree angle. According to the photographer, there were also dark scuffing 'chatter' marks down the runway. A airport mechanic and an FAA inspector examined the nose landing gear, steering linkage, and brakes, and reported finding no evidence of a mechanical failure.
Probable cause
The pilot inadvertently inducing a porpoise oscillation, and his failure to maintain directional control. A factor was the excessive landing airspeed.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98LA370
- Event ID
- 20001211X10860
- Case number
- FTW98LA370
- 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: e083670a02e131a9e8315dc41ef1768ced2fc0f46f7099e29dff224795afc470; retrieved 2026-09-22T17:02:50.101Z.