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LAX99LA170 · Wsk Pzl Warzawa-Okecie PZL-104 WILGA 80 PZL-104 WI

6 May 1999 · Reno, NV, United States

Wsk Pzl Warzawa-Okecie PZL-104 WILGA 80 PZL-104 WI · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing

From 4SD to an unrecorded destination

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Event

NTSB case
LAX99LA170
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

Wsk Pzl Warzawa-Okecie PZL-104 WILGA 80 PZL-104 WI

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
N4UU
Operator
Unknown
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From 4SDTo 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
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(cfi) › Remedial action, delayed
  • Pilot in command(cfi) › Supervision, inadequate

Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

The flight instructor reported that they were landing on runway 26 and the aircraft touched down on the runway centerline with a slight crab to the left. The flight instructor stated that the pilot trainee 'overcorrected with right rudder input causing a swerve to the right.' The pilot trainee applied left rudder but the aircraft continued to veer to the right. The flight instructor reported that he took the flight controls in an effort to correct the drift, but realized that the 'swerve had become uncontrollable.' He stated that he felt it was too late to recover by applying engine power, so he began to apply control inputs for a ground loop. As the aircraft began to ground loop, the left wing contacted the runway surface. The flight instructor reported that the tail of the aircraft began to rise, and the combination of a slight tail wind, a left wing heavy fuel load, and possible excessive braking resulted in the aircraft pitching over and coming to rest inverted on the runway. The flight instructor reported that the automated weather observation service (AWOS) at the airport indicated that the winds were from the east at 4 knots at the time of the accident.

Probable cause

The flight instructor's improper supervision of the pilot trainee and his failure to make timely control inputs in order to maintain aircraft control.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record LAX99LA170
Event ID
20001212X18801
Case number
LAX99LA170
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: 7c4b7b581d8b8e98475ad8f075614eb7953f829b9a46bf7034ab83fe77367fa7; retrieved 2026-09-22T15:20:06.963Z.